Bill Maher Pulls Plug on Two-Hour Interview With Kanye West

When controversy king Bill Maher decides to step away from the spotlight, you know the situation must be toxic. But that’s exactly what’s happening, with the Club Random host telling TMZ that he pulled the plug on a finished, two-hour interview with Kanye West. (Okay, by talking to TMZ, Maher gets the notoriety bump anyway but still.)

The reason Maher is leaving the conversation in the vault? Despite “an amazing, fun time” with the hip-hop star, Maher decided “I’m not going to contribute to this” — “this” being West’s bigoted views against Jews. “He’s a very charming antisemite,” Maher told TMZ. “And by the way, he’s not the only one in America who feels that way. It’s not like the Jews are universally loved except for Kanye West.”

TMZ’s Harvey Levin suggested that Hitler was another guy who emboldened people to express their antisemitic views. “Yes, exactly,” Maher agreed. “That’s why I wouldn’t air that episode.”

Maher is disturbed by West’s appeal to young people, an audience that Maher believes doesn’t “know much and they surely don’t know much about the Middle East or Jews. So the combination of Kanye out there — I feel like he was helpful for spreading the fertilizer, and I do mean fertilizer, for this idea that Israel and the Jews are the worst people in the world.”

Whether or not you believe young people are informed about the Middle East, it’s a rare moment of self-restraint for Maher to hold back an interview that would have received a lot of attention. And he’s not the only one turning his back on West. The rapper is reportedly releasing a new album, Vultures, later this week, but he’s complaining that big venues are refusing to book stops on a planned concert tour. 

“You know what that is,” Ye says in this video post and yep, we know. It’s a long history of antisemitic (and other) controversies that have made the artist radioactive. Just in the past couple of years, there’s a Twitter ban for ugly posts, rants about Jews during a Tucker Carlson interview, and T-shirts promoting neo-Nazi musicians. West will make the occasional public apology, only to do things like the Maher interview where he doubles down on the hate yet again.

How bad has it gotten? Kanye has somehow gone and made Bill Maher the voice of reason.