Kanye West quadrupled down on his controversial “White Lives Matter” shirt during an appearance on Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson’s show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, on Thursday night (Oct. 6), while also roasting the “demonic” promotion of obesity by the media (via his “good Friend” Lizzo) tate he said was part of a plot intended to hasten the “genocide of the Black race.”
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West, who now goes by Ye, saved some of his harshest comments for ex-wife Kim Kardashian, whom he slammed for posting with her rear out for a recent issue of Interview magazine. “Kim is a Christian, but she has people who want her to go to Interview magazine and put her ass out while she’s a 40-something-year-old multi-billionaire with four Black children and this is how fashion, how they want to present her,” he said of the cover, in which Kim posed with her rear exposed to the camera while wearing a jockstrap.
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The rapper, who has released dozens of songs with NC-17-rated, provocative lyrics, added that he thinks Kardashian’s shapewear line, SKIMS, is too sexy. “I had a lot of issues with the imagery of SKIMS. I felt like there’s a lot of imagery that was overly sexualized and things I wouldn’t want to see my wife and definitely not my daughters doing in the future in order to sell product,” he said of his two daughters with Kardashian, North and Chicago. “But it reaches another level when it’s like, ‘OK, well this is what my wife is doing. This is what she is doing for our children.'”
At another point, West said he didn’t realize that when they were married Kardashian was “a cell phone [call]” away from the Clintons, who he claimed were part of an effort at “attempt[ed] manipulation” through Kim to push people to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
West aimed his strongest ire at the backlash to his outrage-machine-fueling decision to wear a long-sleeved shirt with “White Lives Matter” emblazoned on it during a surprise Paris Fashion Week show on Monday evening (Oct. 3). In addition to Ye, some of the models in the show also wore the shirts, with Kanye later posing with conservative commentator Candace Owens, who wore a matching “White Lives Matter” top.
Asked why as a Black man he wore the shirt with the message that the Southern Poverty Law Center has said is a “racist response to the civil rights movement Black Lives Matter” — as well as the name of a neo-Nazi group that is “growing into a movement as more and more white supremacists groups take up its slogans and tactics” — West said it was for Lolz.
“I do certain things from a feeling. I just channel the energy. It just feels right. It’s using a gut instinct, connection with God and just brilliance,” he said, comparing the move to the endless hours of practice someone like disgraced Olympic skater Tonya Harding puts in before executing a jump. In fact, Ye said his dad texted him after the Paris show to let his son know that the “White Lives Matter” shirt made him laugh as well.
“My dad is an educated ex-Black Panther, and he put a text to me today and he said, ‘White lives matter hahahaha,’” Kanye said. “And I said, ‘I thought the shirt was a funny shirt; I thought the idea of me wearing it was funny.’ And I said, ‘Dad, why did you think it was funny?’ He said, ‘Just a Black man stating the obvious.’”
Speaking of controversial gear, West claimed he felt his life was under threat when he wore one of twice-impeached former president Donald Trump’s signature “MAGA” hats during the 2020 election. “My so-called friends/handlers around me told me if I said that I liked Trump that my career would be over. That my life would be over,” Kanye told Carlson in the interview in which the MC went on a tangent about former first son Jared Kushner’s brother, investor Josh Kushner, for what he said was Josh’ larger stake in SKIMS than Ye’s own.
“They said stuff like people get killed for wearing a hat like that. They threatened my life,” West said of unnamed forces who were against his support of Trump. “They basically said that I would be killed for wearing the hat. I had someone call me last night and said anybody wearing a ‘white lives matter’ shirt is going to be green-lit. That means they are going to beat them up if I wear it. I’m like, you know, ‘Okay, green light me then.’“
Ye also pulled Lizzo into a conversation about claims that he body-shamed fashion editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson this week in a back-and-forth about the “White Lives Matter” shirt in which he appeared to make untoward comments about her appearance. West posted some since-deleted tweets in which he mocked Karefa-Johnson — who was in attendance at Monday’s Yeezy show — and told Carlson that the idea that he was bullying “a ‘body goals Black woman’ was patently absurd even as he said that promoting fat acceptance is akin to hyping genocide.
“Now let’s talk about [Gabriella Karefa-Johnson] and my good friend Lizzo. Lizzo works with my trainer, a friend of mine, Harley Pasternak,” he said of the celeb trainer. “When Lizzo loses 10 pounds and announces it, the bots… on Instagram, they attack her for losing weight, because the media wants to put out a perception that being overweight is the new goal, when it’s actually unhealthy. Let’s get aside from the fact whether it’s fashion and Vogue, which it’s not, or if someone thinks it’s attractive, to each his own. It’s actually clinically unhealthy. For people to promote that, it’s demonic… It’s a genocide of the Black race. They want to kill us in any way they can.”
As for the criticism from supermodel Gigi Hadid — who showed support for Karefa-Johnson in the midst of Ye’s tirade against her — West said they were part of a “group mob” he described as “liberal Nazis that will go up and attack you.”
Watch some of Ye’s interview with Carlson below.