Kanye West as Jimmy Kimmel Pushes Him on Trump: 'Liberals Can't Bully Me'
Rapper Kanye West appeared on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Thursday to promote his new album, but the conversation quickly turned to his controversial opinions regarding President Donald Trump.
As The Western Journal has previously reported, the entertainer has earned mixed reviews along ideological lines for several supportive statements in recent months.
When host Jimmy Kimmel asked whether he thought Trump was a good president, West instead launched into his now-common refrain on the importance of free thought.
“Just as a musician, African-American, guy out in Hollywood, all these different things, everyone around me tried to pick my candidate for me and then told me every time I said I like Trump that I couldn’t say it out loud or my career would be over,” he said. “I’d get kicked out of the black community. Blacks are supposed to have a monolithic thought. We can only be Democrats.”
Referencing his hospitalization in late 2016 for treatment of a reported “temporary psychosis,” West said he had to build up the courage upon his release to once again speak his mind.
“Even when I said it right before I went to the hospital and I expressed myself and when I came out I had lost my confidence,” he said. “So I didn’t have the confidence to take on the world and the possible backlash. And it took a year and a half to have the confidence to stand up and put on the hat no matter what the consequences were.”
Instead of overtly expressing support for Trump’s policies, West instead told Kimmel that he enjoys stirring the pot and getting a reaction to his statements.
“I quite enjoy when people actually are mad at me for certain things,” he said.
Kimmel noted that his wife, Kim Kardashian, was reportedly upset over his defense of the president.
“Right or wrong or even if I changed my mind or thought about it more, which I’m not saying that I did, just place the thought out there that everybody’s not thinking sometimes,” he said of his own thought process.
He added that speaking out on the divisive topic “represented overcoming fear and doing what you felt no matter what anyone felt.”
The result, he said, was that no one had control over what he was allowed to think or say.
“You can’t bully me,” West said. “The liberals can’t bully me. The news can’t bully me. The hip-hop community can’t bully me.”
He later referenced an appearance on TMZ that led to questions about his schismatic view of slavery.
“The main thing I was stressing is trying love,” he told Kimmel. “We’re always pushing out so much hate and love can cure so much. Just to think am I moving in love, not in pride?”
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