Former President Donald Trump refused to condemn rapper Kanye West’s antisemitic rant against son-in-law Jared Kushner and other Jews.
Brushing aside complaints from hate speech watchdogs, Trump staunchly defended the rapper on Tuesday, who now goes by the name Ye, as a loyal supporter of him and MAGA Republicans.
“He was really nice to me. Beyond anybody, he was,” Trump said in a new interview. “He was great to me.”
Trump kept on dodging questions even when pressed about Kanye West’s assertion that Kushner only brokered the Abraham Accord peace deal between Israel and some Arab states because he hoped to financially benefit.
“He was great, really, to MAGA, to the MAGA movement, which was very impressive,” Trump said. “I’ve always gotten along with him.”
“He was really high on a guy named Donald Trump,” the former president added.
Trump made the remarks in a new interview with right-wing news host Larry O’Connor.
The twice-impeached president was talking about West’s recent interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson in which he spewed antisemitic hatred.
The rapper went even further into the antisemitic deep end in an appearance on Chris Cuomo’s new show in which he claimed his “life was threatened by my Jewish managers, by my Jewish lawyer, by my Jewish accountant.”
Trump himself has been fending off accusations of antisemitism in recent days.
He warned American Jews to “get their act together” in a tweet that accused them of being ungrateful for what he called his strong support of Israel.
The Anti-Defamation League has condemned both West and Trump for promoting centuries-old tropes about Jewish power, wealth and disloyalty.
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