Ezra Levant argues Kanye West’s anti-Semitic tweets—like "DEF CON 3 on the Jews"—stemmed from stress and contrarianism, not deep belief, but deplatforming him reinforced conspiracy theories among his followers. Dave Chappelle’s SNL monologue highlighted perceived double standards in labeling Jewish influence as unquestionable, while Kyrie Irving’s vaccine stance and Kanye’s financial struggles (including $66M in debt) framed their controversies as relatable crises. Levant contrasts Maricopa County’s delayed election count—with 100,000 uncounted ballots and Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs trailing by just 1.5%—to stricter processes in Texas and Florida, suggesting potential rigging. He warns that censorship, even unintentional, fuels distrust by implying suppressed ideas are powerful, validating extremist narratives while pushing discussions into echo chambers. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I'm going to try and make sense of the Kanye West situation and Dave Chappelle's magnificent monologue on Saturday Night Live.
I'm going to play some clips from it.
I won't give away my thoughts on it, but I just think that Kanye West is a deep intellectual.
Did you know his mother was a Fulbright scholar, a professor?
And they went to China and Kanye West went to China as a boy.
He actually spoke Chinese as a kid.
Did you know that?
So many things to know about him.
He really is brilliant.
But how wrong did he get his rants about the Jews?
We'll talk about it.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
I think it would be a great value add for this podcast to see the comedians in question.
I'm talking about Dave Chappelle and to see Kanye West and the tweets I'm going to refer to.
So please go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
Get the video version of my show and the other shows we publish.
And it's actually how we pay our bills around here because we don't take any money from Justin Trudeau, unlike most media.
Rebelnewsplus.com.
All right.
Here's today's show on Kanye and Dave Chappelle.
Tonight, is there a better way to deal with someone who says something vaguely anti-Semitic than to destroy them?
It's November 14th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Dave Chappelle is this guy.
He's one of the world's leading comedians, or at least America's leading comedian.
He has these massive Netflix specials, which do so well.
They tried to cancel him for some jokes he made about transgender people.
That's certainly a red line you're not allowed to cross these days.
There even was talk about having Netflix banning him.
Obviously, there's too much money at play for that.
I think that Dave Chappelle, he probably would deny it.
It would be bad for his reputation.
But I think if it's possible, I think he's a conservative comedian.
I mean, I don't know if that's quite possible, but here, watch this segment he did a couple years ago about Jussie Smollett, who faked a hate crime against himself.
I want to play just a couple minutes of him talking about Juicy Smollett.
Even the fact he called him juicy makes me laugh.
Take a look at this guy and tell me he's not a conservative.
Happens to Bessie's.
Don't ever forget what happened to that French actor.
You know what I'm talking about?
Juicy Smouye.
He's a very French, very famous French actor.
You ever heard of Juicy Smouye?
Jesus is an actor from France and he became famous on a show called Empire One night, he was in Chicago late at night and was the victim.
He was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack.
You see, Juicy Smouye is gay and he is black, not just French.
Oh, it's a crazy story.
Apparently, when he's walking down the street late at night, two white men came out of the shadows with MAGA hats on, beat him up, tied a rope around his neck, called him all kinds of niggas, and put some bleach on him and ran off into the night.
This shit was like international news.
And everybody was furious, especially in Hollywood.
It's all over everybody's Twitter feed and Instagram page, Justice for Juicy and all this shit.
The whole country was up in arms.
He was talking about it all the time on the news.
And for some reason, African Americans, we were like oddly quiet.
We were so quiet about this shit that the gay community started accusing the African-American community of being homophobic for not supporting him.
Honest Liar Rigged System00:08:29
What they didn't understand is that we were supporting him with our silence because we understood that this nigga was clearly lying.
You know, I think Dave Chappelle today is very different than he was as a younger man when I think he was much wilder.
I think time and wisdom, I think Chappelle is very wise.
And I get a real chuckle out of what he says.
He's got a great style, but I think I learned something from him too.
And I don't say that with, I can't even think of a single other comedian I would say that about.
Anyways, over the weekend, Dave Chappelle guest hosted that iconic late-night TV show called Saturday Night Live that has been on for decades, run by a Canadian named Lauren Menkels, who founded the things decades ago.
Now, of course, some of the writers of Saturday Night Live wanted to boycott him.
How dare we allow this anti-trans activist come?
But of course, Saturday Night Live loves ratings.
And the thing about Saturday Night Live is I think it actually is live, which is very rare for a premium show like that to go live.
Mainly they do things live to tape.
They pre-record them just to get it right and just in case something goes a little askew.
And I'm not sure if it was part of their plans, but Dave Chappelle got on Saturday Night Live and the opening monologue, which is a Saturday Night Live tradition, which is typically a few minutes long, he went on for about 15 solid minutes, which I don't even know if you can do that on TV.
They had to move the commercial breaks around.
I watched the whole thing and it went by in a flash.
It was so funny and so newsy.
I think it was the funniest, most honest comedy that I had seen on Saturday Night Live in decades.
I mean, normally it's just Democrat Party talking points set to laugh tracks like this Hillary Clinton at the piano sad song.
I don't even know what this is.
It wasn't comedy, but it was Saturday Night Live these past 20 years.
Take a look.
I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord.
But you don't really care for music, do you?
Well it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major left, the baffled king composing hallelujah.
Just appalling.
I mean, Donald Trump is ripe for comedians.
I mean, everything about him can easily be caricatured.
And there's so many jokes to be had there.
But instead of choosing someone who would poke fun, they chose a human who was so full of raw hatred and rage that the way he presented as Trump, it was never funny.
It was just spewing insults.
I mean, listen, I would truly laugh at funny jokes at Trump's expense, but this is not that.
Thank you for coming.
I'd like to start by answering the question that's on everyone's mind.
Yes, this is real life.
This is really happening.
On January 20th, I, Donald J. Trump, will become the 45th President of the United States.
And then two months later, Mike Pence will become the 46th.
I am so excited to live in the White House.
I'm even going to have a little pet, like all the presidents do.
Bill Clinton had socks, Barack Obama had Beau, and I'll have Paul Ryan.
I mean, I'm not gay, but I cannot wait to give it to that man for four years.
And guys, I mean, who is excited for my inauguration day?
Yes, thank you to those people over there who I definitely did not pay to do that.
20 years, it's been Democratic Party talking points.
And then last night, Dave Chappelle gets on the stage.
And in the first few seconds, he had me hooked, he started with a disclaimer.
Take a look.
Before I start tonight, I just wanted to read a brief statement that I prepared.
I denounce anti-Semitism in all its forms.
And I stand with my friends in the Jewish community.
And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time.
It is funny, but it is smart and true and wise that these days, if you're going to say anything controversial, you have to bend the knee and say, I'm very tolerant.
I'm going to do a land acknowledgement to the Aboriginal people.
I'm going to talk about my trans brothers and sisters.
I mean, Dave Chappelle was doing it as a joke, but he was actually doing it for real too.
Now, he started off fairly early by talking about Donald Trump.
And he made a point of saying here in New York, you might think Trump is over, but not where I come from.
I want to play for you this Donald Trump story.
Dave Chappelle, I think he actually understands Donald Trump more than 90% people in showbiz and probably more than 80% of journalists in the news business who are headquartered in New York City or Washington.
Listen to Dave Chappelle talk about why people love Trump and still do and maybe always will.
This guy's a comedian and he's really funny.
His style, his voices, his timing, he's hilarious.
But tell me this isn't also outstanding political analysis about Donald Trump.
And I'm watching the news now.
They're declaring the end of the Trump era.
Now, okay, I can see how in New York you might believe this is the end of his era.
I'm just being honest with you.
I live in Ohio amongst the poor whites.
A lot of you don't understand why Trump was so popular, but I get it because I hear it every day.
He's very loved.
And the reason he's loved is because people in Ohio have never seen somebody like him.
He's what I call an honest liar.
Well, I'm not joking right now.
He's an honest liar.
That first debate.
That first debate, I've never seen anything like it.
I've never seen a white male billionaire screaming at the top of his lungs.
This whole system is rigged, he said.
And across the stage was a white woman, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sitting over there looking at him like, no, it's not.
I said, now, wait a minute, bro.
It's what he said.
And the moderator said, well, Mr. Trump, if in fact the system is rigged, as you suggest, what would be your evidence?
Remember what he said, bro?
He said, I know the system is rigged because I use it.
I said, God damn.
And then he pulled out an Illuminati membership card and chopped a line of cocaine up and did it right up to the podium.
No one ever heard someone say something that true.
And then Hillary Clinton tried to punch him in the taxes.
He said, this man doesn't pay his taxes.
He shot right back.
That makes me smart.
And then he said, if you want me to pay my taxes, then change the tax code.
But I know you won't because your friends and your donors enjoy the same tax breaks that I do.
And with that, my friends, the star was born.
Brothers Beating Asians00:10:45
No one had ever seen anything like that.
No one had ever seen somebody come from inside of that house, outside, and tell all the commoners, we are doing everything that you think we are doing inside of that house.
And he just went right back in the house and started playing the game again.
The Democrats were sore losers.
I'm a Democrat, and I'm telling you, as soon as he won, they started saying all that he's colluding with Russia.
He's colluding with Russia.
It was very embarrassing as a Democrat.
But as time went on, we all came to learn he was probably colluding with Russia.
I enjoyed that, and I did not expect to learn about Donald Trump, to actually learn about him on Saturday Night Live.
And I don't think Saturday Night Live did.
It seemed to me like his entire monologue was from memory.
I don't think there was a script.
I don't think it was on the teleprompter.
I could be wrong, but I think that he went up there and riffed for 15 minutes, and I don't think he showed anyone what he was about to say.
Now, of course, Dave Chappelle is a proud black man, and conversations about race and gender and sexuality and difficult subjects like that.
He talks about them quite a lot.
Here's a very funny joke that you're not allowed to say, but I think those are the funniest jokes.
He talks about the atrocious and terrible phenomenon of black people beating up Asian people in America.
And there's nothing funny about that.
It's abusive.
It is terrible.
It's underreported by the media because the only violent people are supposed to be white racists beating up black people.
And Dave Chappelle made a joke about that.
And I think the joke was funny.
Am I allowed to say that?
But how he made the joke, well, that's Dave Chappelle.
Take a look.
And I hate to say this, but there was a lot of videos, sadly, of black people beating up Asians for no reason.
Oh, these attacks were unprovoked.
I couldn't believe it.
And I was sitting in the room watching this shit.
It was stressing me out.
I was stressed already because the whole time when you get coronavirus, at least the first five days, you wait, see how sick you're going to get.
And it turns out, and this is true, I didn't get sick at all.
Not a cough, not a booger, not a fever, nothing.
Look at me.
I am the magic Johnson of coronavirus.
I just sat in the crib and got stronger all week.
But I was stressed because I kept watching these videos of my beloved black people beating up my beloved Asian people and being so cruel.
And the whole time I watched those videos, this is fucked up, but I couldn't help but feel like when I saw these brothers beating these Asians up, it's probably what's happening inside of my body.
So he's not afraid to say edgy things.
And who is in trouble?
Who is in Dave Chappelle's stratum, but Kanye West, the rapper, the artist, the businessman who recently had, I think, what could be called a meltdown online.
He started tweeting about the Jews and saying he was going to go to DEF CON on them.
And he issued tweets like this, and he got more and more focused on Jews and the Jews that were out to get him.
And Dave Chappelle joked that Kanye was so audacious and outrageous and atrocious that it not only undid Kanye, but it undid Kyrie Irving, an NBA star as well.
Take a listen to this joke by Dave Chappelle.
I got to tell you guys, I've probably been doing this 35 years now.
And early in my career, I learned that there are two words in the English language that you should never say together in sequence.
And those words are the and juice.
I've never heard someone do good after they said that.
Kanye's gotten into some scrapes before.
Normally, when he's in trouble, I pull up immediately.
But this time I was like, you know what?
Let me see what's going to happen first.
Let's see.
Let's wanna see where this is all going.
I can't even remember how it started.
Vaguely, I remember it started with a tweet, strange tweet.
It was like, I'm feeling a little sleepy.
I'm going to give me some rest.
But when I wake up, I'm going to go DEF CON 3 on the Jews.
And then he just went to bed.
I was up all night worried.
Is he gonna do to the brown Jewish people?
I have a lot of Jewish friends.
So I'm not freaked out by your culture.
I know a little bit about it just from hanging around.
I'd be like, yo, yo, let's go out at school tomorrow.
They'll be like, we can't go out.
It's Shanana tomorrow.
I'll be like, where?
What is Shanana?
I had so many questions.
Why do some of your people dress like run DMC?
Kanye got in so much trouble, Kyrie got in trouble.
Kyrie Irving posted a link to a movie that he had seen on Amazon.
No caption on the post or nothing like that.
But apparently this movie had some, I don't know, anti-Semitic tropes or something.
It was some weird title, like from Hebrew to Negro or something.
And the NBA told me he should apologize, and he was slow to apologize.
And then the list of demands to get back in their good graces got longer and longer.
What's he talking about?
I showed you one of the tweets that Kanye West did about how he's just going to go DEF CON on the Jews.
He was talking about Kyrie Irving, a basketball star in New York City in the NBA, who I actually, listen, I don't follow the NBA.
I mean, Toronto has a pretty good team, but I just don't follow that.
But I know Kyrie Irving because of his extremely thoughtful, calm, intelligent comments about why he chose not to get vaccinated.
Let me show you really when I got introduced to and became a fan of Kyrie Irving.
Take a look at this.
I didn't appreciate how me being unvaccinated all of a sudden came to be a stigma within my career that I don't want to play or I'm willing to give up everything to be a voice for the voiceless, which I will stand on here and say that that wasn't the only intent that I had was to be in the voice of the voiceless.
It was to stand on something that was going to be bigger than myself and that I was going to understand probably far into the future.
I don't know when.
I think he described vaccine mandates and freedom of choice better than, again, most political commentators.
But the thing is, he made a tweet with no commentary, simply showing a movie that was for sale on Amazon.
So he's not selling it.
Amazon is.
It's called Hebrews to Negroes.
Again, challenging words to use.
And it makes the case about the black Hebrew Israelites who claim to be the true Jews.
Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, is selling this on Amazon.com.
All Kyrie did was link to it.
And that set in motion a series of condemnations, groveling before everyone out there, paying an enormous fine, and essentially having his career implode for a second time.
Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, are they allowed to talk about certain subjects?
Well, Kanye, no one can stop him.
He tweeted about his Jewish personal trainer, which I thought was a strange thing to do.
But what he said about the trainer, showing text messages from the trainer about how if Kanye didn't obey him, he would load him up with drugs and put him in a mental hospital and he wouldn't see his kids again.
That's a shocking thing.
And it looks like an actual text from his trainer, a Jewish man who looks more like a handler than a personal trainer.
As you know, Kanye West was put in a mental hospital or a mental ward a few years ago against his wishes.
Here's some headlines about that.
Kanye West has had a very challenging time in the last year.
He's a fascinating man.
I should tell you that he's no ordinary man.
His mother was a Fulbright scholar, a brilliant professor, top 0.1% genius, and went to Nanjing, China to teach and brought young Kanye with her.
And he was the only non-Chinese person in the class other than his mom.
Kanye West, as a child, spoke Chinese.
He says he's forgotten most of it.
But when he was a boy, he was living in China with his professor mom, speaking Chinese to the Chinese kids.
He's not an ordinary person.
At a very tender age, he was traveling the world, seeing new things, his mind being full of ideas.
The son of Donda West, a professor who by nature challenges, asks, interrogates, is curious, is skeptical.
And Kanye West got in trouble for asking questions and coming to conclusions about the Jews that, quite fairly, could be called anti-Semitic.
Now, I'm going to come back to that later.
What's the right way to deal with someone who talks about Jewish conspiracies, conspiracy theories, in Hollywood, in the music business, in entertainment, in sports business?
I'll come back to that.
But let me get back to what Dave Chappelle did, because Dave wanted to treat this subject too.
But he didn't want to get canceled either.
But there was one joke that he said that really hit home to me.
What do you talk about?
How do you describe a group of black people?
How do you describe a group of Italian people?
How do you describe a group of Jews?
Jewish Influence and Stereotypes00:05:13
And I thought that was a brilliant point to make.
Take a look at this.
It's a big deal.
The Brooklyn show business rules.
This is a rule.
You know, the rules of perception.
If they're black, then it's a gang.
If they're Italian, it's a mob.
But if they're Jewish, it's a coincidence and you should never speak about it.
It's true, though, isn't it?
I mean, even to raise questions about Jewish influence, the questions alone, and there could be good answers, or they could be bad answers, but there could be answers.
But even to ask the question has a whiff of anti-Semitism to it.
And I understand why.
I mean, I'm a Jew myself.
And if someone were to say, oh, your money, your power, your journalism, you're part of a Jewish cabbal, I'd say, what you're doing is you're denying me my individuality.
I'm Ezra Levant.
Yes, I'm Jewish, but I'm also right-handed.
I'm born in Alberta.
I'm a family man.
I do this, I that.
I'm many things.
And to ascribe to me all my actions, to take away my personal choices as an individual and say, I'm just doing this because I'm a Jew and I'm acting as some part of a larger organism, like ants in an ant colony that are somehow working in collusion with each other, that takes away my free agency.
It takes away my meritocracy as a person and as a man.
If you were to define everything I did simply as my membership in the Jewish community, my genetic heritage or the synagogue I go to once a year, you would do me an injustice because you would take away any of my successes and ascribe it to my Judaism.
And you would take away any of my choices and ascribe it to my Judaism.
And I can assure you there's not.
Rebel News talks about countless different subjects and Jewish themes wouldn't even make the top 50.
And so I understand if someone were to say, well, the Jews control the media, or the Jews are, yes, there are a disproportionate number of Jews in media and law and medicine and things like that.
In the Nobel Prizes, sometimes Jews take great pride in that.
Adam Sandler sings a song about Jews and taking pride in which famous people are Jewish.
Remember this song?
Put on your yarmukah, here comes Hanukkah.
So much funuka to celebrate Hanukkah.
Hanukkah is the festival of lights.
Instead of one day of presents, we have eight crazy nights.
But when you feel like the only kid in town without a Christmas tree, here's a list of people who are Jewish, just like you and me.
David Leroth lights the menorah.
So do Kirk Douglas, James Kahn, and the late Dinoshura.
Guess who eats together at the Carnegie Delhi?
Bowser from Shanana and Arthur Fonzarelli.
Paul Newman's half Jewish and Goldie Horns half two.
Put them together.
What a fine-looking Jewel.
You don't need Deck the Halls or Jingle Bell Rock, cause you can spin a dreidel with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, both Jewish.
Put on your yamuka.
Here comes Hanukkah.
The owner of the Seattle Super Tanuka.
Celebrate Hanukkah.
O.J. Simpson, not a Jew.
But guess who is?
Hall of Famer Rod Carew.
He converted.
We got Ann Landers and her sister, dear Abby.
Harrison Ford's a quarter Jewish.
He's not too shabby.
Some people think that Ebenezer Scrooge is.
Well, he's not.
But guess who is?
All three Stooges.
So many Jews are in show biz.
Tom Cruise isn't, but I think his agent is.
Tell your friend Veronica, it's time to celebrate Hanukkah.
I hope I get a harmonica on this lovely, lovely Hanukkah.
So drink your gin and Tanuka, but don't smoke marijuana if you really, really Wanuka.
Have a happy, happy, happy, happy Hanukkah.
But that same thing, counting how many Jews won Nobel Prizes and looking at the disproportionate number, counting how many successful people are Jewish.
Jewish people take pride in that, but I suppose it's like owning a stereotype.
If you talk about your own community that way, it's fine.
But when other people start to do that same thing, it feels uncomfortable.
And I know how that would feel.
Dave Chappelle's Truth00:12:31
But there was a very powerful thing that Dave Chappelle said that is just plain old true.
The Jews have suffered tremendously over the years, but it was not at the hands of American blacks.
I thought that was very poignant.
Listen to him say it.
I know the Jewish people have been through terrible things all over the world, but you can't blame that on black Americans.
You just can't.
You know what I mean?
Thanks, the one person that said who.
A fair punishment beat.
you should just post a link to Schindler's list and y'all write your own captions.
Kyrie Irving's black ass was nowhere near the Holocaust.
In fact, he's not even certain it existed.
I want to play just a little bit more about Dave Chappelle, talking about Kanye West and how he undid himself.
How those foolish tweets destroyed more than a billion dollars in business deals and endorsements, including with Adidas.
And Dave Chappelle didn't miss the fact that Adidas was actually founded by a real, actual Nazi.
Dave Chappelle found a joke in there.
Take a look.
He said, I can say anti-Semitic things and Adidas can't drop me.
Now what?
Adidas dropped that immediately.
Ironically, Adidas was sounded by Nazis.
And they were fit against the students of Pastor Teacher.
He ended, I'm not going to play all of it, but you really should watch all 15 minutes.
And he ended with a note about being canceled, but he didn't say by whom.
And there was a cleverness there.
You could say, oh, he didn't want to mention the Jews because he'd get fired.
But maybe he's challenging you and say, no, why would you think you would be the Jews?
Why are you?
Why is your mind going to that?
I thought Dave Chappelle did a brilliant job of being funny and entertaining and contrarian and making you think about real things.
And I think part of it comes from Dave Chappelle's identity as a black man.
He talks about being black a lot.
It's a theme, he says.
I mean, there's this wonderful clip I saw about him saying the difference between being poor if you're black and poor if you're white.
And he's got a very interesting class and race understanding of America is that whites who are poor say this shouldn't be happening to us.
I mean, I thought there's a beautiful poignancy to Dave Chappelle's political observations.
Dave Chappelle is obviously a contrarian himself.
He would never admit that he's a Republican, but he is a conservative.
I'll just tell you that he is.
And he's a contrarian, and so I think he feels an affiliation or an affection or a patience or a tolerance for other contrarians.
Dave Chappelle is always obviously a brilliant man.
You can't be that funny and that perceptive without being brilliant.
And so too is Kanye West.
I mentioned how he comes from it honestly.
And part of being brilliant is to observe patterns.
And you can miss patterns by being stupid, or you can miss patterns on purpose by being politically correct.
Is it politically incorrect to mention how many professional sports players are black?
I don't think it is because it's a positive trait.
Is it politically incorrect to point out how many Jews there are in Hollywood, in the studios, as agents?
Well, I don't know if you're a Jew taking pride in it, then it's a positive thing.
But what if you're criticizing it?
Or what if you're inferring that there's some group decision-making going on?
Dave Chappelle talked about that.
I love the joke about Ferguson, Missouri.
I've been to Hollywood.
Don't want y'all to get mad at me.
I'm just telling you.
I've been to Hollywood.
This was just what I saw.
It's a lot of Jews.
Like a lot.
But that didn't mean anything.
You know what I mean?
There's a lot of black people in Ferguson, Missouri.
Doesn't even run the place.
I could see if you had some kind of issue.
You know what I mean?
You might go out to Hollywood and your mind might start connecting some kind of lines and you could maybe adopt the delusion that the Jews run show business.
It's not a crazy thing to think, but it's a crazy thing to say out loud in a climate like this.
Look, I've been a fan of Kanye West for a long time.
I truly find his music amazing.
I can't believe how productive he is, what a fountain of ideas he is, how artistic he is, how many styles he has, his command of vocabulary.
I think one sign of intelligence is the size of your vocabulary.
And I think Kanye West is a lot brighter than maybe he lets on.
But what happens if someone is brilliant and perhaps troubled and perhaps hopped up on medicine prescribed to him by his handler and stressed out by a divorce and the sight of his ex-wife and children with a discreditable successor?
What about a man like that who's stressed and contrarian and skeptical and he starts asking questions about the fact that everyone who happens to be involved in his demise just happens to be Jewish?
Now, I'm sure many of the people who helped his rise in showbiz and commerce were Jewish too.
But if everyone who is attacking him, or at least a disproportionate number of the people who are attacking him, from his business associates to his personal trainer, just happened to be Jewish, I'm sure someone could intellectually say, well, that's just a coincidence.
That wasn't the motivation for their attacks.
Well, what would happen if you were attacked by a group of people who all happened to be black?
Even if it was just a coincidence and their blackness had nothing to do with the attack, how could you not think this is a function of their being black?
I think that's what happened to Kanye West.
I think he's in such a stressful position.
And every time he floats an idea, a controversial, contrarian idea, he's jumped on by people who are proving his hypothesis is true, proving you can't talk about something.
You know, I've seen this with other people who are independent thinkers, contrarians.
I've seen, for example, questions about the Holocaust.
Did 6 million Jews really die?
Now, I know that that is true.
When I went to grade school at Jewish school when I was a kid in the 70s, my teachers, two of them, were Holocaust survivors.
I know that this happened from their personal stories.
I know this happened because I've studied history.
I know this happened because I've been to a Nazi death camp.
And I know this because I've been to Holocaust museums in Washington, D.C. and in Israel at Yad Vashem.
I know this to be a fact without a doubt.
But that's because I was born in 1972, not in the year 2000.
I know this because I'm Jewish and I went to the Jewish school I just described.
What if that is not your experience?
How do you know the Holocaust happened and six million died?
Well, you don't know other than you read it, but can you ask a skeptical question without being jumped on?
What if someone simply didn't know and they said, well, how do you know it's 6 million and not 5 million or not 7 million?
And how do you answer these skeptical questions or challenges?
Those answers, even if they're asked with a little bit of edge, are probably legitimate questions from someone who doesn't grow up knowing those things.
It would be like a white person who doesn't know the history of slavery and the history of Jim Crow laws.
You might ask a question, a genuine question, but the question might come out a little aggressive or mean or stupid, but you just genuinely want to know about those things.
And if asking a question in a not perfect way gets you jumped on by people, that confirms all of your suspicions.
And here's my point.
I think Conway West is a deeply intellectual people.
He studies.
He reads.
He reads different sources.
He was tweeting pictures a year ago of himself watching Jordan Peterson videos, philosophical videos.
Here's an outtake from about a year ago when he was deeply Christian.
He was going on tour with a hundred backup singers doing a kind of religious service.
Take a look at him talking to James Cordon, who couldn't even believe it.
Here's a few clips of Kanye West talking about his deep intellectual belief in Christianity.
Yes, and God's always had a plan for me, and he always wanted to use me.
But I think he wanted me to suffer more and wanted people to see my suffering and see my pain and put stigmas on me and have me go through all the experiences, the human experiences.
So now when I talk about how Jesus saved me, more people can relate to that experience.
If it was just, oh, we grew up with this guy's music and now he's a superstar, it's less compelling than, oh, this guy had a mental breakdown.
This guy was in debt.
This guy's been through, you know, not been through, but this guy has a beautiful five years of marriage.
But, you know, marriage years are different than human.
Like, you know, dog years, what is it, seven years?
Yeah, why is everyone?
Every marriage year is like 100 years.
It's like 500 years of marriage.
Look, Kanye West is very smart.
Wouldn't it be better to have an intellectual conversation with him instead of an attack on him?
I think that he was going in the wrong direction.
I think he was going in an anti-Semitic direction.
But the answer wasn't to smash him and to prove his conspiracy theories right by having Jews deplatform him.
And there were Jews involved in those deplatformings.
Wouldn't the answer have been kindness and education and saying, well, here's actually the real answers to your question.
And, you know, there is a phenomenon here, but here's how we would answer it.
And there's nothing cosmically or eternally evil about the Jews.
Like just to give him an answer other than the one he has been taught secondhand, which is yes, the Jews control what you can say.
And we'll prove this because challenging them, you will lose everything you have.
He's a polymath.
He's an independent thinker.
He's a leader.
Millions of black people, especially black men, look up to him because they see he's smart and successful.
And for heaven's sakes, he married Kim Kardashian and he's a star rapper.
I mean, he was a leader.
And to take him and smash him down because he strayed from the path, I think, I do not think that he was deeply wedded to his anti-Semitic comments.
I think he was trying them out, brainstorming them, floating them out there.
But the reaction to him was so heavy-handed that it cemented those as his final views.
Now he's being destroyed.
And Kyrie Irving, and maybe they'll take a run at Dave Chappelle next.
I don't know.
And what have they proved?
The people who ripped up his contracts, humiliated him, condemned him as anti-Semitic.
Well, they proved his theories to be correct about things you can't talk about.
Dave Chappelle did his best to talk about them without getting canceled.
It'd be interesting to see if he gets away with it.
I'm not defending anti-Semitism.
I just know that there are many people out there who have questions about the Jews the same way they have questions about the blacks and women and transgender people.
And just because you ask a question in a rough way or even a way that's prejudiced doesn't mean that's deeply in your heart.
But now Kanye West has lost everything and a million black men have seen what happened to him.
I don't think they've disproved Kanye West's theory about Jews controlling the media.
I think they've actually proved it, even if it doesn't exist.
Well, they just made it true.
What do you think?
Ballots and Broken Machines00:14:18
Stay with me for more.
Well, there's this cult classic.
It's a comedy with Nicholas Cage, I don't know, about 20 years ago, called Raising Arizona.
And it was just a great show.
I'll give you some B-roll of it.
If you know it, you know it.
And it was such a great character play.
We have a website called Watching Arizona because we are riveted by the fact that a state in a first world country like the United States is now at the one week mark and they have yet to finish counting the ballots, more than 100,000 ballots not yet counted.
And wouldn't you know it that the political officer in charge of counting the votes in that state, the title is the Secretary of State, just happens to be the Democrat who's running for governor and is just a hair ahead of her Republican challenger.
What on earth is going?
Well, we are watching Arizona.
We've set up a website called watchingarizona.com and our eyes and ears on the ground, well, there belong to our friend Katie Davis Court, our Seattle-based rebel news reporter who joins us now in Phoenix, Arizona.
Great to see you again, Katie.
Yes, thank you for having me on.
Well, it's my pleasure.
Now, there you are in front of a big building.
That's the county tabulation center.
Am I right?
That's where all the votes are taken from all over the city, maybe even all over the county and put in that big warehouse and slowly counted, right?
Yes, you're absolutely, you are absolutely correct.
It seems that history is repeating itself here in Maricoba County.
As you can see behind me, this is the Maricoba County's election tabulation center.
And the same thing is happening here in 2022 as it did in 2020.
And people are absolutely fed up with how this county is running their elections.
I saw your report over the weekend.
One gentleman pointed out that instead of counting the votes at the local precinct level, you know, they have different names for that in different countries.
You know, a district could be broken up into 100 or more precincts.
In Canada, that's called a poll.
And there might only be a couple hundred votes for each precinct or each poll.
And those traditionally are counted by the people there, scrutinized there.
They never leave the room.
They never leave what's called the chain of custody.
You have scrutineers watching it.
It's counted that night because you're not counting a million votes.
You're just counting a few hundred or maybe a thousand in your little poll area, your little precinct, and you phone in the results.
But I saw one fella say that each ballot in that tabulation center has been handled by six different people.
And here it is a week later.
Who knows what's happened inside that building in the last week?
Right.
You know, it's like law enforcement when they have evidence, they tell no one to touch anything because the chain of custody gets disrupted.
And that is what's happening here.
After you vote, all of the votes get shipped to this Maricopa County tabulation center.
But not just that, they are also contracting services out from other printing centers where they're also feeding through the ballots and counting the ballots there and then loading whatever they find after they tabulate the ballots on Penske trucks, which are then also getting shipped to Maricopa County.
So I don't think that you can even investigate the chain of command at this point.
It's just too many people.
Yeah, it's very interesting because, of course, none of that is proof that tampering or vote rigging is happening, but all of it is opportunities for vote rigging to happen.
And every day of delay makes it more suspicious.
I mean, mighty states like Texas and Florida.
Well, heck, even California and New York counted their ballots the night of.
It's called election day, not election week or election month or election season.
I don't know.
I find it, if I was in Arizona, I would be embarrassed and I would say this looks terrible.
But the local officials just keep smiling and saying, yeah, sorry, but this is how it is.
What's the mood out there?
Is this, is everyone in on it?
Like, like, I guess if you're a Democrat, you sort of nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Oh, I know what's going on.
No problem.
Is it only Republicans who are upset by this or are other Democrats saying, whoa, this is not the way to run a democracy in 2022?
No, I have I've yet to hear a Democrat say anything negative about how Maricoba County is running their elections.
There has been protests outside of the center and one is going to be happening soon, which is why I'm out here on the ground right now.
But the people, the Republicans are angry.
They are infuriated and they feel disenfranchised.
When they showed up to the polls on Tuesday, they were told that the machines were down and the machines were malfunctioning in more than 26 locations, not just across the state, but in Maricoba County.
26 polling locations in Maricoba County had issues with their machines that day.
And when lawyers went before a judge and requested polling stations to stay open later so people could vote, they turned that down.
So they have been showing up sporadically outside the Maricoba County Election Center to make their voices heard because they are, they have had it with how they're running the elections.
And mind you, the protesters that are showing up, they have remained peaceful.
You know, mainstream media wants there to be another January 6th moment.
That is not going to be happening here in Maricoba County because they are just inching for that to happen.
But the protesters that have shown up have remained peaceful.
They are just stating that they don't agree with how the election is being handled.
It's an absolute joke that we are approaching a week.
Tomorrow it will be one week.
And there are still over 100,000 ballots left to be counted.
Absolute incompetence happening here in Maricopa County.
You know, there's a bit of chutzpah.
This is democracy failing.
Like you have one job, count the votes.
The chutzpah for the folks who are breaking the vote counting to accuse others of being anti-Democrat, anti-Democratic insurrectionists is crazy.
You mentioned that the judges said we will not extend voting hours despite broken election machines because God forbid we give Republicans an extra half an hour to vote, but we can wait a week for them to be counted, but we can't wait half an hour, even though the voting machines are down.
I want to play a bit of a video clip from this Laurel and Hardy Act.
These two comedians who were election officials on election day say, oh, sorry, guys.
You know, it's only 20% of polls.
Take a look at these guys.
How on earth do they still have a job today?
Take a look.
Hello, Maricopa County.
I'm Bill Gates, the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
And I'm Stephen Richard, the Maricopa County Recorder.
And we're here to give you an update on how things are going so far with the election.
We've already had almost 44,000 people show up this morning, check in, and be available to vote.
And things are going great out there, but there's one thing that we wanted to address to make people aware of today.
And that has to do with our tabulators.
We've got about 20% of the locations out there where there's an issue with the tabulator where some of the ballots that after people have voted them, they try and run them through the tabulator and they're not going through.
But the good thing is, is we do, first of all, we're trying to fix this problem as quickly as possible.
And we also have a redundancy in place.
If you can't put the ballot in the tabulator, then you can simply place it here in where you see the number three.
And this is a secure box where those ballots will be kept for later this evening, where we'll bring them in here to Central Count to tabulate them.
So this would function much like early voting functions in that we would get your ballot back.
Once we've signature verified it, we would send it to our central tabulators.
Ballots that are in here will already be in effect signature verified.
So we won't need to confirm identity, but we will central tabulate them.
This is actually what the majority of Arizona counties do on Election Day all the time.
And just one thing to keep in mind, we have 223 vote centers across the county.
So if there are lines at the location you're at or issues with the tabulator, if you would prefer to go to another location, you can do that.
Doesn't matter where you go, as long as you're a registered voter here in Maricopa County.
Thanks so much.
And everybody who haven't yet, get out and vote.
You know, I just don't think that they would get away with that if they were Republicans, ragging the puck to protect a Republican incumbent.
I've later learned that those two men actually set up an anti-Trump super PAC.
So you've got the Secretary of State in charge of the elections who happens to be a Democrat candidate.
Those two goofy guys who say, sorry, we can't tabulate the votes.
They happen to be anti-Trump activists.
This really is how a banana republic goes.
I'm disappointed in Arizona.
I love the state.
I haven't spent a lot of time there, but this is embarrassing.
I guess they don't find it embarrassing because they'd rather win through embarrassing shenanigans than lose cleanly.
That's the feeling I'm getting.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, those two men that you just mentioned, they are right behind me in this building.
And they are actually Republicans.
Both of them are Republicans.
And they launched that pact to get rid of MAGA Republicans, as so they said, because they, Maricopa County, they were at the height of national headlines in 2020 for their incompetence of that election.
And so when audits happen in Maricopa County, they were at the forefront of defending how they handled the election then.
And so anyone like Kerry Lake that comes in and says, I'm going to instill voter integrity laws in the state so people feel like their voices are being heard, they have formed that pact to specifically get rid of candidates like Kerry Lake.
And now they are intentionally releasing Democrat heavy precincts ballots first.
And you also have Katie Hobbs in there, the Secretary of State, who is Kerry Lake's Democrat opponent.
It is just absolute shady shenanigans happening here.
And it just, it's setting the precedent for, you know, I live in Washington state.
The same thing is happening in Oregon.
We have all mail-in ballots and our votes are also still being counted.
And when you don't decide winners on election night, it just opens the door to fraudulent activity.
Yeah.
You know, and by the way, the fact that you say the Democrat is in there in her capacity as vote overseer, Secretary of State, but she's actually on the ballot as the governor.
I can't even believe that conflict of interest.
And by the way, the Democrats have called that a conflict of interest in the past.
Here's Obama's attorney general railing against a Republican that was in the same situation.
Take a look at this.
Now, you think about this.
This is a guy who's running for governor while he is the Secretary of State.
That's like LeBron James suiting up for the Lakers and telling everybody in the game that he wants to referee the game in addition to playing for the Lakers.
LeBron's actually a better ball player than this guy is a Secretary of State.
I want to make that clear.
But that's just not right.
That's just not fair.
You can't do both.
He needs to resign.
Now, he is trying, he's trying to rig the system.
He's going to do everything he can to try to win the system, rig the system.
I don't know.
I can't help think that the only reason that they're getting away with this is because the media is what I call the media party.
The media is just an affiliate of the Democrats.
There is literally nothing that Democrats can do that the media won't apologize for or excuse.
And there's nothing that the Republicans can do, Republicans can do that's right other than criticize Trump.
I'm depressed by this.
If you had to guess, does the Republican have a chance here or is it all over?
You know, that is, I think that's the question of the century.
I don't trust these elections in Maricopa County.
I think they're doing everything they can to make Katie Hobbs the winner.
Carrie Lake is down 1.5%.
There's still about 100,000 ballots left to be counted.
They say that it is for Republican-heavy precincts, but I think that I will be surprised if Kerry Lake wins at this point.
Yeah.
You know, every day they delay it erodes trust.
It's just shocking.
Katie Davis Court, great to see you.
Thanks for running air watching Arizona, watchingarizona.com.
I made a little pun about that earlier, but that's where all your reports are, right?
Yes, it is.
Go to watchingarzona.com, you guys, and make sure you pitch in a couple dollars so you guys can get the frontline reportings here in Arizona.
Ryan, thanks for being there, my friend.
Take care.
Thank you.
All right, there you have a Katie Davis court, our American correspondent from Seattle, watching Arizona.com.
Stay with us more ahead.
What do you think about my comments on Kanye West?
They didn't script them.
Quakers And Jewish Thinkers00:03:21
I just put some notes down and I thought I'd riff.
You know, I have a friend who worked at a very prominent national TV station in the United States, and he was like the only Republican in the entire place because it was all Democrats.
He was just the only identifiable Trump Republican, and he had just been signed on for a second season.
And then Trump won, and the entire industry, comedy, arts, entertainment, was so outraged by this, they were appalled and shocked, and they were lashing out.
And my friend was the only conservative in the whole company.
And he had been signed for a second season, and they basically tore it up because he was a Republican, a conservative.
And I was skeptical.
I thought maybe that was sour grapes, but he showed me that it was the truth.
And the people who undid him also happened to be Jewish.
I think what motivated them was that they were left-wing liberal Democrats who supported Hillary Clinton and hated Donald Trump.
The fact that they were Jewish, I think, was secondary.
But when a group of people came to defenestrate him, he couldn't help but noticing that they were Jewish.
And it would be very unusual or very difficult to say, well, everyone who just got me sacked was Jewish, but I know that was a coincidence.
What was actually driving them was their Democrat liberal Hillary Clinton motivations.
First of all, it doesn't make it any better.
He lost his contract.
And second of all, would you really believe that if seven people from, I don't know, Columbia all did that to you?
You would think of it as a Colombian thing if seven Quakers, I'm just making things up, did that to you, would think of it as the Quakers, because you would say, well, yeah, maybe it is all coincidental, but it sure didn't feel that way.
I guess what I'm saying is in our cancel culture and our microaggression hair trigger culture, if someone says something dumb or anti-Semitic or racist or anti-trans, if you really want to correct them, appeal to them intellectually or appeal to their better angels or try and talk them out of it.
But to smash them and to destroy them, you have not changed their mind.
You've shown how righteous you are, maybe, but I think you've cemented them in their views.
I think a lot of people who believe in conspiracy theories, the moment they're shut down for saying that conspiracy theory is the moment they feel that they've been vindicated and that conspiracy theory is being proved.
I think the thing that makes a conspiracy theorist abandon their theory is if no one cares and no one stops them and they're just ignored and no one tries to censor them.
If you try to censor someone, you're implying that what they're saying is powerful and therefore true.
Anyway, I'm upset what they did to Kanye West because I think that he is not a deeply hateful man.
I think he was musing and brainstorming and they destroyed him for it.
It makes me sad.
What do you think?
Do you think I'm being too excuse-oriented for Kanye West?
I saw some of the people I really admire equate what he said to Nazism.
I do not think so.
I think that's just someone who's uncomfortable with the issue of Jewish influence in Hollywood being discussed.
I think it's going to be discussed.
The only question is, do you answer it or do you smash it?
If you smash it, you're just going to drive it underground.
Those are my thoughts for the day.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rubble World Headquarters to you at home, good night.