Kanye West storms out of Tim Pool interview after pushback to his anti-Semitic claims
Disgraced hip-hop star Kanye West stormed off the set of an interview with podcaster Tim Pool on Monday after the host pushed back against the rapper’s anti-Semitic statements.
“To come in here — I feel like it’s a set-up to be like defending … I’m literally going to walk the F off the show, if I’m sitting up here having to, you know, talk about, ‘You can’t say it was Jewish people that did it,’” West said moments before taking off his headset and stomping out of the studio, where he was in the middle of a live interview on the “Timcast IRL” podcast.
West, 45, who claims he’s running for president in 2024, lost several lucrative business relationships and was removed from Forbes’ billionaires list after he began railing against Jewish people in October with a series of remarks.
Former President Donald Trump was swept up in the rapper’s anti-Semitic storm last week when he hosted West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Fuentes and far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos were also being interviewed by Pool on Monday and left when West stormed off about 20 minutes into the podcast.
Before walking out of the interview, West revealed that the dinner with Trump, 76, had been scheduled for October but pushed back to last week.
West also said it was Yiannopoulos who suggested that Fuentes be brought along to the dinner at the former president’s residence and resort.
“I would have never wanted to do anything that hurt Trump,” West told Pool during his brief time on his show, adding that he believes former Vice President Mike Pence “sold Trump out.”
“I’m on Trump’s side. Trump said things that hurt me. He lied about me, but I mean, he’s known for lying,” West said.
“I went into the trenches for Trump … There is no one in my position that wore that hat,” the former entertainment and business mogul added, referencing the 45th president’s iconic red “Make America Great Again” hat.
Several high-profile Republicans have denounced Trump in the wake of his scandalous dinner.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Monday compared Trump to a “gargoyle” that could scare voters away from the Republican Party, and he called the dinner Trump hosted a “disgusting” affair.
“There is no bottom to the degree to which he’s willing to degrade himself, and the country, for that matter,” Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, told NBC reporter Sahil Kapur. “Having dinner with those people was disgusting.”
Trump’s former vice president on Monday called for the ex-commander-in-chief to apologize for hosting West, Fuentes and Yiannopoulos.
“President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier a seat at the table,” Pence said on NewsNation. “I think he should apologize for it and he should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric without qualification.”
Pence, however, stopped short of calling Trump a racist or anti-Semite.
“With that being said … I don’t believe Donald Trump is an anti-Semite. I don’t believe he’s a racist or a bigot,” Pence added. “People often forget that the president’s daughter converted to Judaism, his son-in-law is a devout Jew, his grandchildren are Jewish.”
