Kanye West acknowledged that his antisemitics posts online did not mean that he intended “harm” for Jewish people, but he remained steadfast in defending his remarks, telling Page Six that he was “happy to have crossed that line”.
West’s response to the ongoing fallout that was trigged by his recent comments shared on social media over the weekend came while he was leaving the premiere of Candace Owens’s documentary in Nashville on Wednesday night.
In the video footage captured by Page Six, the 45-year-old rapper can be seen leaving the Woolworth Theater, where hours earlier he’d posed with conservative commentator Ms Owens and his ex-wife’s former boyfriend, Ray J.
One of the photographers can be heard asking West as he begins to tunnel into a limo what he thought of the film, to which the Donda artist responds by saying that he liked it, and then asks: “that’s the only question you got?”
The photographer, seemingly caught off guard that the rapper-turned-fashion designer has decided to answer his questions, then quickly responds by asking if he had any regret over the comments he made over the weekend.
Late on Saturday night, West wrote in a since-deleted tweet that he was going to go “death con 3” on Jewish people and alleged that he wasn’t “Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew,” while on Instagram he accused record producer Sean “Diddy” Combs of being controlled by the religious minority.
Both posts led to him being locked out of the respective platforms, which he remained restricted from as of Thursday.
After taking what felt like a minute-long pause, West responded to the photographer’s question by answering with another question: “Do you think that comment came, from just out of the blue?”
The photographer, not satisfied with the response, then put it to West more directly: “Do you wish harm on Jewish people?”
West immediately responded by saying, “no, no way,” and then went on to couch that response by claiming how “in Hollywood” if you call someone out for “bad business” that’s, in his view, often characterised as being “antisemitic”.
“Hey, if you call somebody out for bad business, that means you’re being anti-Semitic. I feel happy to have crossed the line of that idea so we can speak openly about things like getting canceled by a bank,” he said to Page Six, in apparent reference to a tweet shared by Ms Owens on her Twitter account that alleged JP Morgan Chase had ended their “financial relationship” with Yeezy, LLC.
“[I am] the richest Black man in American history,” he added.
At one inaudible point in the footage, West appears to begin to ellaborate on the alleged split between him and his business’s bank, JP Morgan Chase, but is interrupted by the sound of a passing truck.
The Independent has contacted JP Morgan Chase for comment regarding Ms Owens’s tweet but the institution has declined to comment on the matter.
