“Fox & Friends Weekend” hosts questioned why artist Kanye West had to be “shut down” before they knew about his antisemitic tweet on Sunday ― leading to some furious back-peddling later.
Co-hosts Will Cain, Pete Hegseth and Rachel Campos-Duffy used part of an early Sunday morning show to touch on Instagram restricting West’s account, Mediaite reported.
West, who suggested fellow rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs was controlled by Jewish people in an Instagram post on Friday, got locked out of his Twitter account just hours before the Fox show for another antisemitic post that claimed he would be “going death con 3” on Jewish people.
The post came less than 24 hours after “Fox and Friends Weekend” co-host Ainsley Earhardt called West’s bizarre interview with Tucker Carlson – which included a school shooting conspiracy theory along with attacks on Lizzo and Kim Kardashian – “really smart.”
Cain, who admitted in the 7 a.m. hour on Sunday that he hadn’t “seen” West’s posts, claimed that media organizations don’t provide “supporting evidence” in their reporting of racist or antisemitic posts.
Hegseth admitted that he didn’t know what West said on Instagram, as well.
Campos-Duffy, however, detailed West’s Instagram post before describing a “weird era where people can’t just say what they want to say.”
“This idea you have to just shut down his account is just, it’s totally totalitarian, totally anti-American, it’s just wrong,” Campos-Duffy said.
The trio returned roughly two hours later on Sunday to report on West’s antisemitic tweet and had a noticeably different take on his “shocking” remarks.
“Unfortunate,” Hegseth said.
“Pretty Ugly,” Cain added.
“We talked about it earlier without knowing about these tweets and saying of course they’re going to put a target after what he said with Tucker, there’s going to be a target no doubt,” Hegseth said.
“But in this particular case he brought the target.”
You can watch the trio’s earlier reporting on West and their later reporting – as documented by Mediate – here.