Kanye West Explains His ‘White Lives Matter’ T-Shirt, Says He’s Pro-Life in Fox Interview

“I had someone call me last night and said anybody wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt is gonna be greenlit and that means that they’re gonna beat them up if they wear it, and I’m like ‘Well, okay, greenlight me then,’” the rapper told Tucker Carlson, before adding, “God builds warriors in a different way.”

In 2018, rap legend and fashion designer Kanye West wore a Make America Great Again hat, (most often referred to by its acronym MAGA). It’s unclear how West went from rapping about his grandfather’s arrest after attempting to eat at a “Whites Only” counter in a segregated restaurant to creating a shirt with the phrase “White Live Matter” for his YZY SZN 9 fashion show at Paris Fashion Week.

But in an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, West explained his decision making behind his controversial t-shirt design, which one magazine editor referred to as “pure hate”. West opened the interview with Carlson by explaining that he’s “pro-life” before comparing himself to King David in the biblical story of David and Goliath. He then said his decision to create a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt stemmed from a “gut-instinct” and a “connection to God” and “brilliance” before comparing his creative practice to former figure skater Tonya Harding.

“I think I started to really feel this need to express myself on another level when Trump was running for office,” answered West when Carlson asked him when his conservative views first began. “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 my so-called friends slash handlers around me told me if like I said, ‘I liked 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.”

West went on to tell Carlson that he thought wearing a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt was funny, and claimed that he had a correspondence with his father Ray West (a former Black Panther and a photojournalist who became a Christian counselor in 2006) who approved of the shirt. When West asked his father what he thought of the shirt, he responded, “Just a Black man stating the obvious.”

West then dragged his ex-wife Kim Kardashian into the bombshell interview by stating that she is a “Christian woman in her 40s” and a “multi-billionaire with four Black children,” but that the fashion industry and liberal Hollywood expects her to put her “a**” out. West went on to claim that liberal points of view also caused a rift between him and his father at a young age because his mother was a liberal and was influenced by others on “what to be afraid of”, and drew the same comparison to his ex-wife.

“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 [sic] this whole like ‘Oh, Ye he’s crazy’ and all these things, they don’t work because the media has, they’ve also watched travesties happen—just even specifically to me—and just watched it and acted like it wasn’t happening, and they stayed quiet about it,” said West, who legally changed his name to “Ye,” but didn’t provide an example of one of his personal travesties that the media has ignored, despite Carlson’s questions on the subject.

“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,” said West, when Carlson asked him why he thinks his “White Lives Matter” t-shirt is seen as controversial.

West then claimed that no one knows where Vogue editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson “came from” and said that she, and people like her, are “made in a laboratory.” West and Karefa-Johnson had a dispute following her criticism of his t-shirt design on social media. West posted a since-deleted photo of Karefa-Johnson to social media, writing: “This is not a fashion person.”

“There is no excuse, there is no art here,” said Karefa-Johnson at the time. “I do think if you asked Kanye, he’d say there was art, and revolution, and all of the things in that T-shirt. There isn’t.”

Model Gigi Hadid came after the “New Slaves” rapper and called him a “bully” and a “joke” who wished he “had a percentage of [Karefa-Johnson’s] intellect.”

“Vogue stands with Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, our global fashion editor at large and longtime contributor. She was personally targeted and bullied. It is unacceptable,” Vogue posted to social media on Tuesday.