Tucker Carlson interviews Kanye West October 2022

Tucker Carlson: Good evening and welcome to Tucker Carlson tonight. Kanye West, now known as Ye, is one of the best-selling musical artists in the world. He's also in recent years become a celebrated and very highly paid fashion designer. And of course for a decade he was well-known to TV audiences as an in-law of the Kardashian family. But it's West's latest incarnation as a kind of Christian evangelist that brought us to his office in Los Angeles today for the interview you're about to see. Days ago during Fashion Week in Paris, West accompanied by his friend, Candace Owens, unveiled a T-shirt that read simply White Lives Matter. The response from the fashion industry and international media was instantaneous and uniform. Shock, horror, rage. There is no excuse for this, thundered the New York Times. West is legitimizing extremism, shrieked Rolling Stone, etc., etc. What was strikingly missing from the coverage, however, was any explanation for why West did this. What was the T-shirt about? No one seemed to think to ask him, much less to listen to what he had to say, much less to listen to what he had to say. Instead the enemies of his ideas dismissed West as they have for years as mentally ill. Too crazy to take seriously. Look away, ignore him. He's a mental patient. There's nothing to see here. But is West crazy? You can judge for yourself as you watch what we're about to show you. He has his own ideas. We can say that. Creative people tend to. That's why they're artists, not actuaries.His free form social media posts give the impression of a man channeling his rawest emotions right onto Instagram. The effect can be jarring and it's often used as ammunition against him in the battle for influence over the minds of America's young people. And that battle is intense. But crazy? That was not our conclusion. In fact, we've rarely heard a man speak so honestly and so movingly about what he believes. But again, you can judge for yourself. Here it is.Tucker Carlson: So you just came from Paris Fashion Week. You just landed. And the lanyard is still on from it. And there's a photograph on it. What is that?Kanye West: It's a photograph of a baby's ultrasound.Tucker Carlson: Why is that? And you designed that?Kanye West: Yes.Tucker Carlson: Why? What does that mean?Kanye West: It just represents life. I'm pro-life.Tucker Carlson: Boy, so you wear it on a badge. What kind of response do you get? Amen. I agree.Kanye West: I don't care about people's responses. I care about the fact that there's more black babies being aborted than born in New York City at this point. That 50% of black death in America is abortion. So I really don't care about people's responses. I perform for an audience of one and that's God.Tucker Carlson: I'm starting to see why they want to make you be quiet. When did you start to feel this way? When did you start to realize this?Kanye West: I really felt like I think I started to really feel this need to express myself on another level when Trump was running for office and I liked him. And every single person in Hollywood from my ex-wife to my mother-in-law to my manager at that time to, you know, my so-called friends slash handlers around me told me, like, if I said that I like Trump, that my career would be over, that my life would be over. They said stuff like people get killed for wearing a hat like that. They threatened my life. They put my life, they basically said that I would be killed for wearing the hat.I had someone call me last night and said anybody wearing a White Lives Matter shirt is going to be greenlit and that means that they're going to beat them up if they wear it. And I'm like, you know, okay, green light me then. And, you know, you know, God builds warriors in a different way. I don't know if it's because of me being born in Atlanta and growing up on the south side of Chicago that, you know, he made me for such a time like this. It's like with David. You know, he tended to the sheep, but while he was out there, he had to fight all kinds of animals. So when it was time for Goliath to come, he thought because he was a sheep herder that he didn't have the skill set to take down Goliath. And the thing that I have is the position. I have my heart. But the number one thing is we have God on our side. And for the people, even if you don't believe in God, God believes in you.Tucker Carlson: So you made reference to the White Lives Matter t-shirt which you brought out at Paris Fashion Week. Why did you do that and what did it mean?Kanye West: You know, I do certain things from a feeling. I, like, I just channel the energy. It just feels right. It's using a gut instinct, a connection with God, and just brilliance. You know, like, if you ask, like, Tanya Harding how she did the triple flip or the triple spin, she was in so much practice that when it was time for her to skate in a competitive format, it just happened. Like, it happened outside of practice. It happened in the real format. And that's what's happening. God is, like, preparing us for the real battles. And we are in a battle with the media. Like, the majority of the media has a godless agenda. And the jokes are not working. This whole, like, oh, yay, it's crazy and all these things. They don't work because the media has, you know, they've also watched travesties happen, just even specifically to me. And just watch it and act like it wasn't happening. And they stay quiet about it.Tucker Carlson: What are they ignoring?Kanye West: I want to answer the white. I feel like someone caught what I was saying, the comparison to Tanya Harding about the White Lives Matter. You know, my dad is an educated ex-Black Panther. And he put a text to me today. He said, White Lives Matter, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And I said, I thought the shirt was a funny shirt. I thought the idea of me wearing it was funny. And I said, Dad, what do you think it was funny? He said, just a black man stating the obvious.And, you know, my dad doesn't listen to rap music. And he's, like, super educated. We opened up a water distribution center in the Dominican Republic together. He's, like, the original Steve Jobs. But he was getting blocked every which way with all of his ideas. And he didn't have an endless bank account. And he didn't have an Instagram. So all these ideas, he had to, like, take them back and compress them. Like, my dad is the most brilliant person that I know. And we actually have a strained relationship because I was taken from him. Because my mom was an actress, so she was a liberal. And my dad would see certain things and say, you know, we should do it this way. We should do it that way. And the people got around my mom and pulled her away.Much like, you know, Kim is a Christian, but she has people who want her to go to Interview Magazine and put her ass out while she's a 40-something-year-old multi-billionaire with four black children. And this is what, how fashion wants to, how they want to present her. So I know you give these, you get these questions and I give you, like, these three-part answers. Is this a cool format for you?Tucker Carlson: Yeah, I love it.Kanye West: Okay, cool.Tucker Carlson: And I am following it.Kanye West: All right.Tucker Carlson: So you said that your father said when he saw the shirt, White Lives Matter, it's great to see a black man stating the obvious. So by which I think you meant that's obviously true.Kanye West: Yeah, that's my favorite response because I kept on thinking, like, you know, people, they're looking for an explanation and people say, well, as an artist, you don't have to give an explanation, but as a leader, you do.Tucker Carlson: Yes, I think that's right.Kanye West: So the answer to why I wrote White Lives Matter on a shirt is because they do. It's the obvious thing.Tucker Carlson: Why do you think that's so, and I assume the implication is, of course, all lives matter because they're lives, because God created them.Kanye West: Yeah.Tucker Carlson: Why do you think that that would be considered controversial?Kanye West: Because the same people that have stripped us of our identity and labeled us as a color have told us what it means to be black and the vernacular that we're supposed to have. My dad grew up as a military brat. And his family moved around, but they were based mostly in Delaware. And at the time, if he wasn't, if they weren't the only black family, they were one of the few. And he would be discriminated against because he was black. So by the time he got into college, he would be discriminated against. He went to a black college, he would be discriminated against because they said he talked too white.Tucker Carlson: Yes.Kanye West: And then he played the kick drum in the band. So when he would go to the club and the music was playing, where would he clap his hands? Where the kick drum is. It was the opposite of where everyone else was clapping their hands. And this is the most elegant and tasteful person that I know. And when my mom, when the school suggested, like the hurting systems, because what they do is take the black community and they separate us. And they separate the families and the educated, you know, they push this, you know, need for higher education. And us as blacks, we discriminate against each other and say, well, I got my PhD and you don't have your PhD. So I'm better than you.And so my mom, she had a PhD and she was influenced to move to the south side of Chicago and take this job at Chicago State University. And she told my dad, if you come, if you come for us, you know, you'll never see him again. Because, you know, the media ridiculed me for getting the house next door to Kim to see my children. And they even said that I was stalking her and her new boyfriend because I bought the house next door to see my children. And that's how I knew that my mom had said that to him. I said, Dad, you know, they moved us to one of the most dangerous, agreed upon to be one of the most dangerous places in the world. It's almost like they tried to kill me or something. And I said, Dad, why didn't you ever, why'd you never come to get us? And that's when he told me, that's when he told me that she was told that.You know, there's so many things that are put in Kim's head. You know, they bring influencers. Like, no one ever knew where Corey Gamble came from. No one in the fashion world knows where Gabby came from. These people were practically made in a laboratory, in my opinion. And one of the things that they're really good at doing is being nice and being likable. And what they do is, for people that have some form of influence, whether it's an educated black woman like my mother that became the head of the English Department of Chicago State University, or whether it's the most influential white woman on the planet, being my ex-wife, they have people that are around them at all times telling them what to be afraid of. It's like not what to do or say specifically, it's what to be afraid of. And if you have a person that isn't afraid of them, you know, like a Russell Brand or Candace Owens, it's not that we have to agree with this, but they're not afraid. They're not afraid to state what their opinion is.Tucker Carlson: Yes.Kanye West: No one is God, and everyone has an opinion.Tucker Carlson: There's a group mob. It's like liberal Nazis that will go up and attack you. And like I said, you know, everyone's like, Anna Winters is your friend. I'm like, this Gabby girl and Gigi and these people, they would have never said anything negative unless they got the okay from Condé Nast, unless they got the okay from Anna. They would have never got the okay to comment.Tucker Carlson: Like, let's just talk about specifically. So these are people who were attacking you for your T-shirt.Kanye West: Well, it was a setup. It started off as, it started off as them having this black girl comment and say, well, I felt traumatized when I saw this T-shirt. It's like a black girl saying, I felt traumatized when I saw a black man wearing something that he wasn't allowed to wear. It's like in Django when Jamie Foxx is on top of a horse and Samuel L. Jackson's like, you know, that black guy's not supposed to be on top of the horse.Okay, and then I went and said, hey, I don't like your boots. I know Anna Winters doesn't like your boots and you're not a fashion person. And then people started to say, I was a bully, but it was a setup and they finally got it, right? Because I eliminated the BLM officer at Adidas. And then I got out of the gap deal and just one by one by one, I just be, I've been winning these battles, right? And they thought they had me. They had the idea that Ye was bullying what I think the term, the liberal term is a body goes black woman.Now, let's talk about Gabby and my good friend Lizzo. Lizzo works with my trainer, a friend of mine, Harley Pasternak, Harley Pasternak. When Lizzo loses 10 pounds and announces it, the bots, that's a term for people like, it's like telemarketer callers, like on Instagram, they attack her for losing weight. Because the media wants to put out a perception that being overweight is the new goal when it's actually unhealthy. Let's get aside the fact of whether it's fashion and vogue, which it's not, let's just, or if someone thinks it's attractive, to each his own. It's actually clinically unhealthy. And for people to promote that, it's demonic.Tucker Carlson: Can I ask? I've noticed this also.Kanye West: Yeah.Tucker Carlson: Why do you think they would want to promote unhealthiness among the population?Kanye West: It's a genocide of the black race. They want to kill us in any way they can. Planned Parenthood was made by Margaret Sanger, a known eugenics with the KKK. And I believe that if we saw ourselves as more, if we saw ourselves as a people and not a race, then we would treat our people better. Like if you go to a Jewish person and you say a race, it almost gets confusing. It'll cut you off quickly and say, we're not a race, we're a people. Well, our people are supposed to just say, say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud. Okay, well, what about do you own the land that you're living in? Do you own, is the contracts even in a language that's even possibly understandable?Tucker Carlson: Right.Kanye West: You know, for your heritage, you know. You know, and in America, we as blacks will like down each other on how good we speak. But we're speaking English. There's nothing whiter than English. We're not in our native tongue, actually. So we judge each other on white goal lines, not based on exactly what our culture is based on.Tucker Carlson: It was interesting. A friend of mine told me that Chris and Kim had called him because he had influence inside of the black community and had called him to say, oh, to get him to influence people to take the vaccination. And I don't have an opinion on that. I just want to state that as a flat statement. But it was wild that I didn't know how close my own wife was to the Clintons. I didn't know, you know, I didn't realize it at the time.Tucker Carlson: That you were married to her?Kanye West: Well, I was married to her.Tucker Carlson: How close was she to the Clintons?Kanye West: I mean, cell phone away, like, or, hey, tell you to say this away, or, hey, go out and use your platform to push the vaccination away. I mean, not away, but, like, let's take the away part, but, you know.Tucker Carlson: Do you feel like at times you were manipulated by political forces through your wife?Kanye West: But, yes, there was some manipulation. Me not saying I like Trump was a form of a manipulation.Tucker Carlson: For sure.Kanye West: Yeah.Tucker Carlson: Why did you like him, by the way? You said you liked him early, like you saw him.Kanye West: I mean, I mean, I keep telling this joke. If people say Trump was the first black president, I'm going to be the first Latino president. Because all the values, the conservative values just line up. Come on, man, Trump's this shit. What do you mean? He has his own buildings. What are you talking about? He's like, like Ralph Lauren. He made Ivanka.Tucker Carlson: You like Ivanka?Kanye West: Yeah.Tucker Carlson: You tweet, you wrote a post on Instagram about her husband today.Kanye West: Yeah. You know, I had a dinner with Ivanka, Jared, and Josh. And a couple of days later, I found out that Josh Kushner had 10% of skims, which is a line that I had developed with Kim. And I had a lot of issues with the imagery of skims. I felt like there was a lot of imagery that was overly sexualized and things that I wouldn't want to see my wife and definitely not my daughters doing in the future in order to sell product.But it reaches another level when it's like, okay, well, this is what my wife is doing, and this is what they're doing for, this is what she's doing for our children. But it reaches another level when her business partners are selling pieces of company that they don't have to because the company is already so successful and it's an Internet-based company. So it's like they're really just selling off the company in order to create more relationships for themselves that are unneeded. It's like when I went to The Gap and with our release, they just like, they shoveled it out. I'm very cautious with my words. I'm really big on being able to have an adult conversation in front of the children. So I don't use explicit language in interviews especially.So I found out after this dinner that Josh Kushner had 10% of skims and I had 5% of skims. And regardless if, you know, Josh Kushner figured out how to put $150 million, I'm sure it wasn't out of his own account, but $150 million, and I'm sure Jarrett still has a piece of that fund. And regardless of them putting that money in, for me to have been an owner in it and not known just from a place as a creative where skims is so based on a lot of the easy ideas, then it's based on all of the relationships in fashion because I had to use my relationships in fashion in order to establish Kim in a way where fashionable people say, hey, I'm down to where Kim's line.And these VCs, they come in and they get a piece of it after the fact and they run around and say they have ownership in it. And so as I put on my Instagram, which, you know, luckily for everyone, they could just write it off that, you know, I'm crazy until they see my disposition in this interview and then it's going to get scary. They, um, um, I said, hey, Josh, what if, uh, what if I had 10% of Karlie Kloss's lingerie shapewear swimsuit line and you have 5% of it and you didn't know? How would that make you feel?And then after talking to them and really sitting with Jared and sitting with Josh and finding out other pieces of information, I was like, wow, these guys might have really been holding Trump back and being very much a handler right then. They love to just look at me or look at Trump like we're so crazy and that they're the businessmen. And so when I think about all of these things that Jared, you know, somehow doesn't get enough credit for with his work, and what is it, his work in Israel or his work in, what is this? You know where he made these peace treaties? Where was that? Do you know the facts on this right here? So I'm like...Tucker Carlson: Well, I think that was between Israel and some of the Arab nations.Kanye West: I just think it was to make money.Tucker Carlson: I don't know. Is that too heavy-handed to put on this platform?Tucker Carlson: No, that's your opinion. We're not in a censorship business.Kanye West: Okay. Thank you. And I just think that that's what they're about, is making money. I don't think that they have the ability to make anything on their own. I think they were born into money. And for me, as a maverick and a talent and a person that's been, you know, beat, kicked, lost everything, said to have lost my mind, went from pulling myself up by my boot. My boots don't have straps on them, but I say pull myself up from my boots to becoming a multibillionaire that gets, you know, the price every year. My network goes down every year on Forbes. They just keep on slowly just taking it down every year. It's like really a weird thing.But as a person that has really built something from nothing, when I sit across the table from a Josh Kushner and he just feels so entitled to that idea, and this person has never brought anything of value other than so-called being a good venture capitalist, I have a major issue with that. And it makes me feel like they weren't serving my boy, Trump, the way we could have because, you know, Trump wanted nothing but the best for this country. And it doesn't, like, Moses stuttered. I'm saying God is not always going to bring the most perfect personality. A lot of times the most fake people, their job is talking and making people feel comfortable. You know, and the realist people are going to make you feel uncomfortable at first.Tucker Carlson: Yeah, that's not shallow. And it's also not crazy. It's true. Whether you agree with it or not. So, West has thought a lot about politics and he's thought a lot about what's going to happen in 2024. You'll hear that coming up. He's also very close to Elon Musk, which we didn't know. Asked him, off the cuff, do you know Elon Musk? Oh, yes, very close. He's got a lot of thoughts on that, too. That's next.We told you at the top you'd be able to assess for yourself whether West is crazy, as virtually every single media outlet on planet Earth claims every day, all year long. Is he crazy? As you try to assess that, ask, is what you just heard over the past 40 minutes any crazier than what you see on television every day? The lies, the lunacy presented you with a straight face as reality? No, it's not. It's not crazy at all. He's a big thinker, though. We asked him about 2024 and what he plans to do, and also about Elon Musk. Here it is.Kanye West: People with power try to make other people feel like they don't have any. My power is through God. So if someone ever says anything like, oh, you did a great job, it's praise God. It's funny, atheists love the term narcissist when you believe in yourself.Tucker Carlson: Right.Kanye West: They say that it's narcissistic. You know, I love the way, I love the dynamic of how you compare, you show that there's still humanity even with the position that God has placed me in. Why did Moses smite the rock? Why did he get that frustrated? And just to be able to be gentle, to be more gentle. You know, God is alive. Look at this right here. Look at how quiet it is right now. It's only God. God is of order. The devil is of chaos.Tucker Carlson: That's true.Kanye West: You know, we are, I want to talk about my potential run for 2024 and Trump's potential run for 2024 and the beloved DeSantis potential run for 2024 and Mayor Suarez potential run for 2024 and, you know, you know, they thought Trump was a joke. For older white people, they're quick to classify a black person only by the fact that we're black. Even Trump, a person that we consider to be a friend of mine, when I went to the White House, I called him after that to get A$AP Rocky out of jail. And one of the things he said to me is, you know, Kanye, you're my friend. When you came to the White House, my black approval rating went up 40%. And for politicians, all black people are worth is approval, is an approval rating.The Democrats feel that they don't owe us anything. And Republicans feel that they don't owe us anything. Blacks have never demanded something for our vote. And that's something I talked to Ice Cube about. What are we asking for? How do we change our life? If all of our organizations and all of our colleges and even our title as black was made by white people, all of our, you know, all of our jobs and black Wall Street, Harlem after gentrification, there's never been a fully black-owned community where we have all the municipalities, things that Dr. Claude Anderson talks about. We need that. It's like 90% of America is not even developed. I'm not one of the people that go up and say, hey, I want to stop anybody from making money. The people that make money and the powers that be, I am your true Nikolai Tesla. And I'm not even a scientist.Tucker Carlson: What do you think of Elon Musk? Do you know him?Kanye West: Very well.Tucker Carlson: What's your take on him?Kanye West: You said that because I said Tesla?Tucker Carlson: I did, yeah. It's just the first thing that popped up. And that everyone's always like, oh, Elon's got these answers.Kanye West: I think he's a great, I think he's a great team player.Tucker Carlson: It's amazing what the stakes are when a very famous person decides to speak his mind. Very famous people can't have free speech. That's not allowed. And West discovered that when he initially decided he kind of liked Donald Trump. Watch.Kanye West: I never actually told people that I liked Trump when he was running because I was bullied by Hollywood. Because I stayed in Hollywood and people are like, think about your kids and I'm trying to hold on to the marriage. So I'm just biting my tongue. Like there's so many fathers and mothers that go to work every day and they're in a situation where they're biting their tongue because they think it would be better for their children.Tucker Carlson: That's right.Kanye West: So even me in my position, I was biting my tongue on my political opinion because I thought it would be better for my children.Tucker Carlson: Now, last week he was at the Paris Fashion Week and unveiled a shirt that said white lives matter. And, of course, much outrage ensued and he was roundly denounced as insane. Virtually no one asked him why he did that. So we thought before dismissing him as a mental patient, it might be worth hearing his side of the story. Just listen to him.So we came out to L.A., booked a 30-minute interview with West, which quickly morphed into a two-hour interview. And we're so grateful that it did because one of the most interesting, deep and provocative conversations we've ever watched. Everybody thought that. Guys operating the cameras thought that. It really was fascinating, whether you agree or not.So, among many other things, West gave us his assessment of Barack Obama, whom he knows well and has known well for many years, even before he became president. Here's what he said.Tucker Carlson: Do you talk to Obama still?Kanye West: I was Obama's favorite artist. He actually met with me. Obama met with me and my mama to say that he was running for office back in 2008. And that he wanted the support. And everybody was so into this idea of the black president. And we were always, you were always cool. And it's also like, you know, how many, how many of us are there, you know, Obama level, yay level, you know, Virgil level, just black. You know, so brilliant that we cut through all of the lines of racism. Like, you just can't get rid of us. Nat King Cole level. Uh, Dave Chappelle level.So, in some place, we'd have to be friends and get along, because it's like, you know, you're at that level. You're like a, you know, Formula One, Lewis Hamilton race car driver. We're still driving a white car. But, we're the best race car drivers, uh, that ever existed. And that was, that was me and Obama's connection. But, soon as I wasn't saying the things that I was supposed to say as a rapper, uh, our connection faded.Tucker Carlson: So, you don't talk to him anymore?Kanye West: I'll talk to him if I see him.Tucker Carlson: Yep.Kanye West: But, I guarantee you, he see me.Tucker Carlson: I didn't even know him. I just thought that would sound cool. Who's...Kanye West: One idea that was in my head about three minutes ago that I really want to say, it's a, uh, that's really interesting about the, uh, when a company's get the BLM managers.Tucker Carlson: What's a BLM manager?Kanye West: Black Lives Matter.Tucker Carlson: Black Lives Matter.Kanye West: Uh, office manager. Uh, it's basically you get a semi-influential black person to become the face of a white company.Tucker Carlson: Yeah.Kanye West: Right? So, that means, like, in the design world, in the art world, they actually would pick artists that were less talented than other artists based on their influence. Uh, not based on their actual work because everyone is vying for influence and an opinion. Everyone is afraid of losing their opinion.So, with Nike, right, Nike is as famous as... you say Nike's more famous than PayPal, right?Tucker Carlson: Yeah.Kanye West: Right. Right. What, what number company do you think PayPal is?Tucker Carlson: I don't know.Kanye West: Number four.Tucker Carlson: Overall?Kanye West: Overall. You got... well, you know what the number one is, right?Tucker Carlson: It's Apple.Kanye West: Yeah. I forget number two, but number three is, uh, McDonald's, then SpaceX is maybe six or seven. It's really interesting that, as lit as Elon is, his previous company is actually still worth more than, uh, than SpaceX. So, what number company do you think Nike is, the Nike?Tucker Carlson: Number 321.Kanye West: It's not there to be as big a financial company as it can be. It's there as an influencer, because black people love Nike. So, Nike is like a company that is redlining and gerrymandering black people. So, the reason why Gap wanted me to go the Gap, it wasn't based on, oh, we need to get our stocks up. Um, you know, it's like these companies, when they've been around for a long time, Gap's not, like, they're like, we're in the rag trade, we're never going to be Apple. You know, and everyone, all of these American companies somehow took this, this deal where they start putting in these really awkward, weird number kind of CEOs. Like, Nike's got one, um, uh, the Gap had one, it didn't work out. And there's all of these weird operators inside of companies, even in Balenciaga, you know.The, and they, um, they're just there for control. Steve Jobs talked about it. It's the most important thing you can have is control. Look at me, all the money, all the influence, and I have to act a complete ass to have any say-so of anything that my children are doing. Because that, uh, group of people have control and say-so over all the children inside of the Klan. So, that's what these companies are set up for. That's the type of CEOs they're hiring. Especially when the founders are out of there, they kind of just give the companies up to a bunch of people, and they're all in cahoots.Like, anyone that ever worked with me, they just look at, oh, who's yay farming for talent that we can hire to be our new BLM office manager? Like, kind of like Obama.Tucker Carlson: What do you, you think, you think of Obama as a BLM office manager?Kanye West: Best one ever.Tucker Carlson: Yeah.Kanye West: Best one ever. And, you know, I think Obama, just like Virgil, these people were truly black to their core, and truly brilliant to their core. But they went into situations thinking that they could do it the white way as a black man. And we saw what color Obama's hair was when he went in, and we saw what color it was when he went out. You know, Virgil lost all his hair, you know, and eventually passed away.So when I have techniques that are revolutionary, if I raise my voice, if I express myself on Instagram, it's a colonic. And people can say, oh, that, this is what you're doing is toxic. If what I'm saying is toxic, if what I'm saying is toxic, I got to do everything to get it out of my body. And there will be times where I see a level of, like, oppression, Parisian proper, like next level, you know, France owns 80% of African banks level colonization, oppression. And I'll be like, I'm not going to let you guys kill me.But one thing that has to really happen, say if Trump ran, right, we're not just going to be black influence. We're going to be vision and creativity. We've got to rethink who we are as a species. Right now, we practice killing ourselves every day, like murder is legal in America, you know.Tucker Carlson: In abortion.Kanye West: Yes. So whoever gets the position needs to listen to the vision. I didn't know it was going to rhyme when I first started. But they need to have Elon, they need to have me.Tucker Carlson: You should start with those two and then we'll get to the rest of them.Kanye West: We could pull in a Johnny Ives. We'll pull in all of our living, super brilliant people. And we need to analyze and not just sell out for the cash. Like these Fortune 500 companies are just selling out for the cash. And put God first and the best representation of God is the children. The children is the extension of the family. Put the families first. There's so many things. Suburbs. The train tracks being ripped up by GM just for capitalism. All these ideas that we have.We're now living in a place where we're the orphans of capitalism. And we just have to take a pause and rethink how we can have the most beautiful existence possible for our children, for the kids. And we're all kids. We're all God's kids. We're all sons of Abraham.Tucker Carlson: So as we said, this interview went almost two hours and not a moment of it was boring, at least from our perspective. We can see if you agree. Coming up next.So if you Google Kanye West or yay, one of the first words to appear, and in fact, a word that appears in virtually every story is crazy or mentally ill or bipolar, struggling with mental illness, et cetera, et cetera. The theme is always the same. The guy's a nut. Don't listen to him. And of course, we're suspicious of that because through history, in the Soviet Union, for example, claims of mental illness were always a way to make dissident voices be quiet. Don't listen. He's a lunatic.And so we asked, yay, directly about this, about his very public struggles with manic behavior, but his hospitalization for exhaustion. And he gave a remarkable answer, and a believable one. And he said, the life I was being forced to live was driving me crazy. I had achieved fame and fortune, and yet I was still not allowed to express what I really believe. That diminished me, and it drove me nuts. And by the way, my marriage was falling apart. And those two facts were interconnected.Kanye West: It drove me crazy to not be able to say that I like Trump. It drove, because think about it, it's me. Imagine me not being able to say what I wanted. What was the point of being famous? What was the point of having, you know, millions of people love your music? What was the point of having a voice if you can't even use your own voice and connect it to your own opinions?Tucker Carlson: Yes.Kanye West: That's where the disconnect happened. That's where the, quote, I think wrongly, wrongly diagnosed, that's where the bipolarity is. Because you've got something you're thinking, but you're told you're not allowed to say it in public. Well, I never actually told people that I like Trump when he was running, because I was bullied by Hollywood. Because I stayed in Hollywood, and people are like, think about your kids, and I'm trying to hold on to the marriage. So I'm just biting my tongue.Like, there's so many fathers and mothers that go to work every day, and they're in a situation where they're biting their tongue, because they think it would be better for their children.Tucker Carlson: That's right.Kanye West: So even me, in my position, I was biting my tongue on my political opinion, because I thought it would be better for my children. And now you look up, and my kids are going to a school that teaches black kids a complicated Kwanzaa. Kwanzaa doesn't, you know, so they don't teach, even Christmas itself, Christmas, they don't teach it at Sierra Canyon.And what they do is take all of the celebrities, the actors, the basketball players, and they throw them in this one school, and they indoctrinate the kids. So my son saw him as brilliant. So right now, they're looking to figure out how to indoctrinate him to make him be another part of the system.I have a choir at my school. So right now, we've come to a compromise. But I'm not finished, because I don't compromise. But we come to a compromise when my kids go to my school after school, and they learn choir. I sat there with my son, and he came, and he said, why do I need to sing? I don't even go to your school.So imagine the 16-year-old version of that guy, the 26-year-old version of that guy, where the father doesn't have say-so of what the kids are watching, what the kids are wearing, what the kids are eating, who the kids are hanging out with. Ray Kurzweil said, we have the information needed to have a human utopia, but we're led by the least noble, most greedy people. There's a solution that can bring happiness to so many more people.I even had this idea about, you know, the connection of Big Pharma to farms by having localized farms. With more localized farms, you can use less pesticides. If you have less pesticides, then you have less diseases. And have Big Pharma invest in the local farms, and they'll actually make more money. I'm not one of the people that go up and say, hey, I want to stop anybody from making money. The people that make money and the powers that be, I am your true Nikolai Tesla. And I'm not even a scientist.Tucker Carlson: What do you think of Elon Musk? Do you know him?Kanye West: Very well.Tucker Carlson: What's your take on him?Kanye West: You said that because I said Tesla?Tucker Carlson: I did, yeah. It's the first thing that popped up. And that everyone's always like, oh, Elon's got these answers.Kanye West: I think he's a great, I think he's a great team player. You know, like I said about Ray Kurzweil and Utopia. You know, in Rome, they would bring all the most brilliant people and have them sit down to the point where their seats had a toilet in them. Like, people would not even get up to use the bathroom. And they would ideate about what society needed.And they'd invent new things, and they'd put it all up on the wall. And Donda, before it was a school, is a design firm. And what I would do is pull together all my favorite thinkers, and we'd invent. That's why I was happy that you saw two of the inventions right there.You know, because now it's like, if I had said that before you drank the coffee, and some might joke and say you're drinking the Kool-Aid. But before you drank the coffee, and before you saw the 3D printed boot, zero waste 3D printed boot, if I said Nikolai Tesla, you'd probably, you could have smugged that off.You know, I think it's insane for an administration to not use a talent like Elon Musk more. Like, if I was in a, or once I am, I will eventually be president before, you know, in my lifetime. But if I was in office right now, I would be meeting, I'd be calling Elon every day. I'd have him sleeping in the White House.I'd say, how do we use our platform as the most influential, that's a 40 in slip, the most influential country in the world to show the rest of the world how to live a simplified life? But our country is under attack, and media and industries outside of our country are doing anything to keep it as it was. And everyone's just afraid.God is love. And I understand I come off scary sometimes because I'm like, I'm going to protect my kids. I'm going to protect my reputation. I'm going to protect my brand. And there's times when you have to pull the guns out. You have to pull the swords out. You have to have righteous indignation as a Christian for everyone that ever said, I can't get mad because I'm a Christian. As a Christian, it's like, yeah.Tucker Carlson: I don't understand how you can work and be so successful and influential in the music business and the fashion industry, the two most liberal businesses probably in the world, as a professing Christian with a pro-life badge on. How does that work?Kanye West: I always think whenever I think, whenever God allows a brilliant idea to channel through me and allows me to somehow, you know, take credit for it, I always snicker at the fact that with liberals, their main, you know, their main tool is, you know, that they use artists and influencers, right? But then God has the number one artist and the number one influencer as a conservative. So I always chuckle at that.Every time I come up with some brilliant, I was like, could you imagine if, you know, they could have just indoctrinated, yay? You know, the world could have just totally been ran into the shithole. And there's times there's battles that the devil had won, but the devil's a defeated foe.So, like, for me to have gone from Jesus walks to you're such a hoe, I love it, you know, that's that deviation from the path. So, I mean, I love that question because I really, every time, I just, it just, it just tickles me, you know, like, that the very thing that liberals use the most of, they don't have the best person at it.Tucker Carlson: I mean, do you talk to other people in your business, you know, who are successful in the music industry, the fashion business, who secretly agree with you?Kanye West: Yeah, there's a lot of, I mean, there's a lot of fashion people. I mean, Tommy Hilfiger loved Trump. Let me see who are, I got to think of all the other Trump, I'm not even going to use the term Trump supporter.Tucker Carlson: Right.Kanye West: Because that's, why don't people say Hillary supporter or Biden supporter? This is just, you know, yeah, there's a lot of people, you know what? You know, people in my business who love Trump, businessmen, people who love money.Tucker Carlson: Yeah.Kanye West: You know, people who love money, people who actually like being successful and, you know, and not ran into the ground. Like, those are some of the people.Tucker Carlson: Speak for a moment with West, and he is very likely, in fact, almost certain to tell you about his faith, his belief in God. That's what drives him. He often says it, and he can explain it and explain why. Most people in public don't talk like this.Tucker Carlson: That's why he asks any question about virtually anything, and the conversation moves back to his faith in God, which is clearly foundational and is driving his transformation from a pop star to what he hopes to become, which is a spiritual leader. He explained it in this clip.Tucker Carlson: What's your prayer life like? Do you pray a lot?Kanye West: This is a prayer. We're in constant prayer. I thought Hail Mary came to me, not in a Catholic way, but more like in a Tupac way, like, "Come with me, Hail Mary, I'm going to run quick, see, what do we have here now? Do you want to ride or die? Na, na, na, na, na, na, na." Have you ever heard that?Tucker Carlson: Yeah.Kanye West: It's like a Negro spiritual. It's a chant. It is, you know, it puts you in that mode. I got a song that I made. It was like a mix. It was a hybrid of that and Led Zeppelin, and it went. It goes. It's like my best song. "La, la, la, la, wait till I get my money right. La, la, la, la, then you can't tell me nothing right." And people, I mean, I can open up this stuff. I can open up this. I can open up tours with this song.Kanye West: I wanted to point out this hybrid. You know, it's like if you see Zombieland 1 and Zombieland 2 or Terminators, anything, they always make the characters a little bit badder in the next generations, next generation, next generation. So that's, you know, Kim is like a hybrid. She's not just Marilyn Monroe. You know, she's also, she's also a fashion person. She's also a mom. She's also an activist. She's a lawyer. She's a multi-billionaire. She's hot. She's one of the most beautiful people of all time. You know, this is a different level of video game character now.Kanye West: And when you see a headline that says, Kim says, oh, I'm going to stay single forever. That's the indoctrination. Like, because they want this person to tell all the little girls out there that they need to be single forever. You know, all moms, I know there's definitely people who watch this film.Tucker Carlson: Do you think that? So you don't think that's an organic, natural thing? I mean, that is a message that she is being used to send?Kanye West: Absolutely. Think about the song. Don't talk about Bruno. No, no, no, no. Which already sounds weird. Like it's, you know, talking about like an uncle or something that did something wrong if they say don't talk about Bruno, right? But in the song, listen to the lyrics. It says, the man of my dreams will be slightly out my reach. And I just see my kids running around and I see these things.Kanye West: But, you know, the thing about, you know, hey, guys, for the execs at Disney that are studying everything I'm doing and saying, trying to figure out how to connect with 15-year-olds. And that's why Bernard Arnault, you know, buys Supreme. And instead of putting a true skater designer, they put like a BLM manager as the head of Supreme because Supreme has an impact with the 15-year-olds.Kanye West: For the Disney guys, you know, you might not believe in God, but God believes in you. It's not a battle you can win. It's like, "don't jump Anakin, I have the higher ground" kind of situation. So you could put out all of the indoctrinations and, you know, moves and have the biggest media company, but why am I alive? Why am I protected? Why did I become the richest black man of all time? Like, how did that happen? And the more and more I lean into God and work for God, the more wins God is going to bestow on our team, on Jesus Gang.Kanye West: And for me to go out and just state an obvious and empathetic statement in the middle of the most liberal central light to go, that was like Tiananmen Square or something, right? I was like, with Candace Owens. And we both wore the shirt at the same time. You know, we got some Jesus soldiers out here. And people say they're willing to die for it, but we live for it. We're living for the battle. And what's the battle for? Life itself. Our children. They're killing us through the food. They're killing us through the content. They're killing us through the programming. But God is alive and is alive in all of us. And we will overcome.Tucker Carlson: It sounds like you're hopeful for the future of the country.Kanye West: Absolutely, because I have the vision for it. I understand the ecosystem. I understand how to even liberate a big pharma. I have solutions for the future. You know, I don't have the entire vision. You know, certain things are just in front of me and they happen when they're supposed to happen. But there's so many open doors.Kanye West: It's like, we have this concept. I was been, this is put on my heart, the idea of a monastery. I call it the Dondastery, which takes the different disciplines and blends them together. And in the Dondastery, we have proper baby health care. Like, and I'm sure there's a higher, like, actually when I met with Gabby, she had a really, really good term for this. And so many people bring their babies to the hospital, not just black people, and the doctors mess up. And they're like, oh, there's been some complications.Kanye West: So to be able to have, like, incredible nurses. I was very specific about saying nurses instead of saying doctor, too. I don't believe you need a doctor. And I'm not a doctor, but a nurse. It's possible, you know, to have a successful childbirth. And so that's the first thing we provide, shelter. We won't turn anyone away. Food, clothing, high-end curriculum, and vocational curriculum, farming, carpentry, automotive, computer, software, and hardware.Kanye West: So it becomes a new place where you, someone can lay the baby on their steps and say, hey, the situation I'm in, I don't have enough money for another kid. I don't have the time. I don't have the room in my house. I just don't have the resources. And every day for the past two months, I've been walking by this Planned Parenthood, and I'm thinking about stopping in because I just can't have this baby.Kanye West: And what I'm doing is saying, hey, well, let's put a place just across the street from the Planned Parenthoods and say, this is a place that if you, when you decide to have your child, this child can have the best opportunity at life.Tucker Carlson: Do you think the society discourages parental involvement, parental influence over the children?Kanye West: I mean, society is like a big term. You mean...Tucker Carlson: It is. Well, you had said that your father was discouraged from, you know, being in your household, and you have been discouraged from being in your children's lives.Kanye West: Yeah.Tucker Carlson: Do you think this is a thing that happens to a lot of people in America, to a lot of men?Kanye West: Absolutely. And a lot of men deal with a mother and the baby mama and the mother-in-law ganging up to take the child away.Tucker Carlson: Yeah.Kanye West: And not wanting to give the dad his say-so. Like, there was even a moment where we were arguing about Norah's basketball coach. And I had to say, like, I went from not making a basketball team in eighth grade to winning championships in ninth grade by practicing every day. And Norah likes basketball, I'm going to come and practice with her every day. I'm also going to pick the other coaches that work with her. And now that she's back playing basketball, this is the most confident person in the league. She's like the Dennis Rodman.Kanye West: And when Norah snatches the ball out of a girl twice her size and she comes over to the side, I tell her, don't let anyone take anything from you ever. Don't let anyone take anything from our family. Don't let anyone take our company. Always protect your brothers and sisters.Tucker Carlson: More from that interview coming up. An amazing conversation with a man who by any measure has led an amazing life at the very center of American culture for decades. COVID had an effect on his life and his thoughts about it. Here's that part of the conversation.Tucker Carlson: Did watching COVID and the medical establishment's response to COVID over two years change your view?Kanye West: I mean, that was a piece of it. That was a piece of it.Tucker Carlson: What did you think of that?Kanye West: I mean, well, specifically, I'm going to lean into the black condition just for, you know, being a black person. You know, we've been getting killed in hospitals for years. Grandma and Mom don't come out. You know, we've been getting killed with our food to start off with. We've been getting killed by police officers. You know, every day we've been killing each other in the streets every day.Kanye West: You know, I felt like the people at The Gap knew about the school shooting that Matthew McConaughey was talking about before it even happened. It was so in sync, the information, and then I heard about it on the radio driving. And I was like, am I in the Truman Show right now? And I tell Candace she's got to watch the Truman Show. You have to watch the Truman Show.Tucker Carlson: What do you mean the people at The Gap knew about the school shooting? I think in Uvalde, Texas?Kanye West: Yeah. I'm not saying that they did, but it felt so in sync, this idea of like this media rush over the 78 specific outlets that influence. Meanwhile...Tucker Carlson: So there's a coordinated message, I think that's what you said.Kanye West: Yeah. Meanwhile, there's the same amount of kids getting killed in Chicago every week, but there's no coordinated message about that. Have I reached Alex Jones' territory yet?Tucker Carlson: No, I think you're telling the truth.Kanye West: Okay.Tucker Carlson: And that's okay if you do.Kanye West: What I'm saying is like, yeah, they keep on using the, oh, he's crazy, he's crazy thing. And it hurts my feelings when people say that. It hurts my feelings that people can ask me, hey, are you okay? Like, especially, like, just, I got an ego. Someone that's less successful than me, having the right to ask me about me, like they're a doctor.Kanye West: What, you want me to put some ice on it? I'm going to put some ice on my brain, it's going to fix it. You know, if everyone's got the solution, you know, put some ice on it. Do you know if that worked, we wouldn't need hospitals, we just have, like, ice dens for everything. It's like, grandma's got cancer, put some ice on the cancer. You know, I'm, like, funnier than comedians, right? And I'm, like, an asshole.Tucker Carlson: But you get that, you get that a lot, people with the kind of faux sympathy. Are you okay?Kanye West: Yeah, it's like, you know, don't, but you get that even as a famous person. Oh, go ahead, you know, go before me, this, hey, what do you want? And, like, it's hard for people to even listen to you. You know, they're just so, like, oh, my God, this is yay. Did you hear what he said again? And there's a lot of people that have been put in my organization where it's their job to not listen to me.Tucker Carlson: In your own organization?Kanye West: Absolutely.Tucker Carlson: And that kind of thing can drive you what?Kanye West: Crazy. Yeah, I had, um, my resolution this year was to only talk to people who listen to me.Tucker Carlson: I know, crazy concept, right?Kanye West: I know, that's crazy.Tucker Carlson: How radically did that shrink the number of people you talk to?Kanye West: Not enough. Not enough. Because that's how they do. They send the bots in. There's people working here. You know, it's like, you have, Prince had to constantly fire people. I got to constantly fire people. It's just all kind of people sitting around, doing nothing, charging. I had 530 consultants last year.Tucker Carlson: For your businesses?Kanye West: For my businesses? For my businesses? I didn't know. We just hired some guys in. And, you know, this is the issue when you hire atheists. I think that's illegal to say in California. But, you know, sue me. This is the issue. You know, because God-fearing people perform for an audience of one. At the end of the day, we all know we have to answer to God.Tucker Carlson: And we'll be right back. Kanye West. Yay. Not crazy. Worth listening to, even if you disagree. And chances are you're going to have a chance to listen to him in future years. Because if anything, he's getting bolder. That's it for us tonight. Tune in every weeknight. The show that's the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink. Have the best weekends with the ones you love. And we'll see you Monday.*There may be errors on this page.