Kanye West insults Trevor Noah after host likens harassment of Kim Kardashian to abuse
TV host Trevor Noah came out guns blazing Tuesday night with a monologue that discussed the harassment Kim Kardashian is experiencing from ex-husband Kanye West.
The rapper, now known as Ye, responded Wednesday morning by calling “The Daily Show” host a racist slur.
“All in together now,” Ye wrote around 6 a.m. Wednesday on Instagram, then went into lyrics from the song “Kumbaya,” distorted to include a racial epithet. The caption featured a screen grab showing pictures of Noah, who’s South African, with the info blurb that Google serves up when someone searches for a famous person.
His slam on Noah was part of Ye’s most recent social-media tear, which included new criticisms of “Saturday Night Live” star Pete Davidson, who has been dating Kardashian.
Actor Jameela Jamil slams Kim Kardashian for her “work ethic” advice to women in business, echoing similar criticism from others on social media.
Ye highlighted a Breitbart headline from January 2019 that referenced Davidson making jokes about having sex with a baby, and wrote in another caption, “Im really concerned that SKETE will get my kids mom hooked on drugs He’s in rehab every 2 months.”
He also criticized the comedian’s Hillary Clinton tattoo and mocked “SNL” writer Dave Sirus, who recently posted texts between Davidson and West on his own Instagram account.
Wednesday’s flurry of social media activity came after Noah gave a heartfelt monologue (now being used as a fundraiser against domestic violence) in which he looked at Kardashian’s situation from a slightly different perspective: one where the beauty and reality TV mogul is also a human being.
Noah noted that the ongoing Kim-Kanye-Pete drama has “grown into a story that seems fully tabloid, but I think ... deserves a little more awareness from the general public ... because it touches on something that is more sensitive and more serious than people would like to admit.”
After talking about the recently revealed texts between Ye and Davidson — in them the rapper asked where the comic was, to which Davidson replied, “I’m in bed with your wife” — Noah said that what he’s seeing in this situation is a woman who wants to go on with her life without being harassed by her ex.
“What she’s going through is terrifying to watch, and it shines a spotlight on what so many women go through when they choose to leave. You know, people always say that phrase to women. They go, ‘Why didn’t you leave?’ ... Yeah. Because a lot of women realize when they do leave, the guy will get even crazier. And when I say ‘crazy,’ I don’t mean ‘mental health crazy,’” he said.
Before talking about his own childhood, growing up in an abusive household, Noah spoke plainly.
After fending off Kanye West over the weekend, Pete Davidson is A-OK to head into space: The ‘SNL’ star will be Blue Origin’s third celebrity guest.
“What we’re seeing ... is one of the most powerful, one of the richest women in the world, unable to get her ex to stop texting her, to stop chasing after her, to stop harassing her,” he said. “Just think about that for a moment. Think about how powerful Kim Kardashian is, and she can’t get that to happen.”
Noah said he witnessed abuse as a child and saw the reaction from family, friends and even the police, who questioned his mother for what was happening to her, rather than question the behavior itself. He said he watched it for about seven years.
The more things change, the more they stay the same as the Kardashian-Jenner clan gets ready for its new reality show’s April 14 Hulu debut.
“I’ll never forget one day, I got a call from my brother saying, ‘Hey, Mom has just been shot in the head. She’s in the hospital now. She’s just been shot,’” Noah said. (His mother survived being shot in the head and leg by her ex-husband — the bullet missed her brain — and his stepfather was convicted of attempted murder.)
“I’m not saying Kanye will,” Noah said. “I’m not saying that. But you see it in all these stories where people say, ‘We saw it, but we didn’t...’”
It’s reminiscent of how the 2016 story about Kardashian being robbed at gunpoint in Paris evolved.
It’s been a crazy week in the life of Kim Kardashian since she was robbed at gunpoint early Monday at her luxury apartment in Paris.
At first, many in the public 100% doubted she had been tied up, thrown in a bathtub and had to beg for her life while armed criminals ransacked her hotel room and stole $10 million worth of jewelry and other valuables. She was accused of staging the entire thing, until it all turned out to be true.
Then some folks noted how different the news would have been received if the headline had been “American woman robbed at gunpoint in Paris” instead of “Kim Kardashian robbed at gunpoint in Paris.” Would a plain-old American woman have been accused of faking it, they wondered.
Since then, Kardashian has changed her lifestyle, no longer making information about her location and her jewelry readily available on social media. She recently passed the so-called baby bar in pursuit of a law degree. And she is a single woman again, though her financial and custody arrangements with Ye aren’t settled yet.
Finally realizing that writing in all caps is like SCREAMING, rapper Ye softens his tone: ‘I take accountability. I’m still learning in real time.’
“I’m not saying Kanye’s just a bad guy. Please,” Noah said in his monologue. “But just as society, you know, we have to ask ourselves questions. Do we wish to stand by and watch a car crash when we thought we saw it coming? Or do we at least want to say, ‘Hey, slow down ... let’s all put our hazards on, ‘cause there’s a storm right now and some s— might go down.’ If it doesn’t happen, the worst is we all had our hazards on like idiots.”
And he closed with this: “All I’m saying about this story is, if Kim cannot escape this — Kim Kardashian, if she cannot escape this, then what chance do normal women have?”
The biggest entertainment stories
Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
