Kanye West Talks Trump, Mental Health, & Porn on 'Kimmel'
Five years after his last interview, Kanye West returned to “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Thursday night (Aug. 9) for his first televised interview since releasing his album ye.
During the 20-minute sit-down, the multi-faceted artist discussed music and fashion, his support for Donald Trump, his children, mental health, and his love of porn.
Kimmel brought up Kim Kardashian West and her successful efforts to commute the sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a first-time nonviolent drug offender. When asked if he was concerned about his wife being alone in the Oval Office with Trump during her visit to Washington D.C., Ye responded, “Well, he is a player.”
The talk show host also asked if he thought Trump was a good president. “Just as a musician, African-American, guy out in Hollywood, all these different things—you know, everyone around me tried to pick my candidate for me,” he said. “And then told me every time I said I liked Trump that I couldn’t say it out loud or my career would be over. I’d get kicked out of the black community because blacks, we are supposed to have a monolithic thought, we can only be Democrats and all.”
After being hospitalized, he slowly regained his confidence to “stand up and put on the hat.” “It represented overcoming fear and doing what you felt, no matter what anyone said,” he said. “Liberals can’t bully me; news can’t bully me; the hip-hop community, they can’t bully me. Because at that point, if I’m afraid to be me, I’m no longer Ye. That’s what makes Ye. And I actually quite enjoy when people actually are mad at me about certain things.”
But he was left speechless after one question. “You so famously and so powerfully said George Bush doesn’t care about black people. It makes me wonder, what makes you think that Donald Trump does or any people at all?” asked Kimmel.
West didn’t say a word and sat silently pondering an answer before Kimmel cut to commercial.
He also spoke about designing clothes for his children and his daughter North attending fashion camp. “I visited her and together we put the thread through the sewing machine,” said Kanye. “And it really brought me to tears to think about the 15 years that I’ve been working on apparel and for my friend Virgil [Abloh] to be the head of Louis Vuitton, and for me to have this $1.8 billion company out of a thread going through…”
When asked if his attitude towards women has changed since having daughters, Kanye admitted, “Nah, I still look at Pornhub,” while sharing his preference for “a lot of black on white, obviously.”
He revealed that he “slept a lot” during the recording sessions and shared his thoughts on mental health. “I think it’s important for us to have open conversations about mental health, especially me being black because we never had therapists in the black community. We never approached taking medication.”
He also reflected on being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “I think it’s good that when I had my first complete blackout at age five, my mom didn’t fully medicate me because I might have never been Ye. There’s times where at least I’m happy that I know.
“I’m 41 years old. I don’t know anyone that fucked up as much as I have and is still as successful. So I want to prove that you can get fat, you can say the wrong things, you can piss a whole city off…” before Kimmel added, “You can be the President of the United States.”