Sophia Michaels
Kanye West’s definition of a friend is a little off-center. During his Thursday night appearance on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, the rapper used his “good friend” Lizzo as the driving point behind a critique on the body-positive movement, calling the championing of her weight “demonic” and – along with abortion, for some reason – comparable to a “genocide of the Black race.”
West set up the conversation by telling Carlson he wanted to discuss both Lizzo and Vogue editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, who he bullied and sparred with earlier this week over his “White Lives Matter” t-shirts to the point of her social accounts being flooded with fatphobic comments.
“Lizzo works with my trainer, a friend of mine, Harley Pasternak. When Lizzo loses 10 pounds and announces it, the bots – that’s a term, it’s like telemarketer callers – 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.”
He continued: “Let’s get aside from the fact whether it’s fashion and Vogue – which it’s not – 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.”
Carlson backed West’s point, saying he has also noticed this trend because, of course, he has. Lizzo has been living rent-free in the minds of conservative reactionaries and Fox hosts, who are happy to take advantage of any publicity received by the singer to launch a wave of vicious commentary on her body.
Urging him to continue, the host asked the rapper to explain why the media would want to promote “unhealthiness among the population.” Jumping to the most extreme point possible, West responded: “It’s a genocide of the Black race. They want to kill us in any way they can.”
Lizzo did not immediately return Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.
He then roped Planned Parenthood into the conversation, claiming founder Margaret Sanger created the organization in collaboration with the Ku Klux Klan. “I believe that if we saw ourselves as a people and not a race, then we would treat our people better,” West said immediately after with no clear through-line. “Our people are just supposed to 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? Is the contracts even in a language that’s even possibly understandable for your heritage?”
Miles away from the point of origin, West wrapped, saying: “In America, we as Blacks will down each other on how good we speak, but we’re speaking English. There’s nothing whiter than English.” Insisting that Black people are not utilizing their “native tongue,” he condemned the judging of “each other on white goal lines, not based on exactly what our culture is based on.”
Carlson, who has built a toxic platform as a champion of white nationalist ideology and a loud critic of the Black Lives Matter movement, was the perfect audience for West’s hour-long journey of tangents. For the hour he spent on the show, the conversation meandered from his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, the Kushners, a potential presidential run, and more double-downed defenses of his “White Lives Matter” shirts.
