Listen to Media Matters' Matt Gertz explain Tucker Carlson and Fox News’ role in making Ye a right-wing hero
Gertz: “They didn't want to talk about Kanye West as an anti-Semite. They want to talk about him as a right-wing hero. And so that's what they did”
Published
Listen to Media Matters' Matt Gertz explain Tucker Carlson and Fox News’ role in making Ye a right-wing hero
Citation
From the December 2, 2022, edition of SiriusXM's The Michelangelo Signorile Show
MATT GERTZ (GUEST): Tucker Carlson did an extensive interview with him shortly after that fashion week thing and then, you know, aired portions -- we later discovered -- of this interview totaling somewhat over an hour, over two nights of his show. And he really talked up Kanye throughout this. He was talking about how brave Kanye West was to talk about how much he loved Trump and very specifically saying that Kanye West is not crazy and you can tell from this interview that that is the case. West, of course, has a, you know, very well known series of mental health crises in his past and has discussed them at length. But Carlson wanted to fit him into a very particular picture as a right-wing hero. And so that was -- that's what he did. And so for days after that --
MICHELANGELO SIGNORILE (HOST): And this was an edited interview where they obviously made him to seem very lucid and very friendly and all of that.
GERTZ: Absolutely. And so Fox used that to talk him up for days after that, with, you know, a bunch of different hosts getting in and praising him and saying that, you know, people don't want to talk about Black Republicans and so on and so forth. And then he started making a bunch of anti-Semitic comments on Instagram and on Twitter and got banned briefly from both of those platforms.
You know, suddenly it was a big story that Kanye West was an anti-Semite. But of course, Fox already knew that because, as Vice subsequently revealed -- they got a hold of stuff that had been left on the cutting room floor from this interview -- and it's him saying horrible things about Jewish people. And, you know, Tucker Carlson decided not to air that. Fox News decided not to air that. And, you know, that was a huge scoop that they could have had, that that Kanye West was an anti-Semite, but they didn't want to talk about Kanye West as an anti-Semite. They want to talk about him as a right-wing hero. And so that's what they did.