Here’s Why Bill Maher Won’t Air His 2 Hours Long Podcast With ‘Charming Antisemite’ Kanye West

Many have criticized Kanye West for his antisemitic beliefs. The most recent person on this list is Bill Maher.

Maher disclosed that he had a two-hour interview with West for his podcast, Club Random , but that he would not be releasing the segment because of the notorious rapper’s antisemitic sentiments. “I thought it was going to be a learning moment,” Maher revealed when he appeared on TMZ Investigates’s February 5 episode, which was centered on West and his views, titled Unhinged but Unstoppable , per Variety .

“We were here for two hours. By the way, we had an amazing, fun time,” Maher added, calling West “a very charming antisemite.” He shared, “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.” With his many disturbing remarks, like the one on Alex Jones’ program in which he said that people “stop dissing the Nazis,” and writing on X/Twitter that he would go “death con 3 on Jewish people” West has emerged as a leading antisemite within the previous 18 months. A December 2022 Rolling Stone article even revealed that West had been idolizing Adolf Hitler for almost two decades.

He was a persistent propagandist of antisemitic conspiracy theories concerning Jewish ownership of financial institutions and hospitals. Following his early antisemitic comments, West lost his fashion collaborations with Adidas, Balenciaga, and Gap and was fired by his agency, CAA. TJ Maxx and Foot Locker also stopped carrying clothing from Kanye West’s Yeezy line. Most recently, he rapped, “How I’m antisemitic? I just f**ked a Jewish b**ch” on his recently released song Vultures part of his new album. In the interview, Maher said although West is not individually responsible for antisemitism, he’s a large part of the problem.

“The problem, I think, is that he appeals mostly — of course he’s a rock star — to young people. They don’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 helped spread the fertilizer, and I do mean fertilizer, for this idea that Israel and the Jews are the worst people in the world,” Maher explained to interviewer TMZ’s Harvey Levin. Regarding West’s encouragement of others to express their antisemitic beliefs, Levin told Maher that  “you could say the same thing about Hitler.” Levin asked, “A lot of people were thinking what he was thinking, but in Kanye’s case, the fact that he’s saying it out loud permits other people to say it too, right? Yes, exactly,” Maher said, explaining that, this is why he didn’t want to share the episode with West. “That’s why I wouldn’t air that episode because I’m not going to contribute to this.”