Emhoff calls on coalitions to ‘step up’ in response to rapper Ye’s ‘horrible’ antisemitic rhetoric

First gentleman Doug Emhoff says every time Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, says something “horrible,” other prominent voices need to come to the forefront to combat antisemitism.

For “every horrible thing that [West] says, we need others to step up and … talk about not only that antisemitism is bad, but who Jews are, and the awesomeness of it,” the entertainment lawyer and second gentleman said in an interview with Deadline’s Ted Johnson, published Friday.

“That’s what we need, and we need coalitions,” Emhoff, 59, said. 

“Right now, there’s a lot of discourse that’s not positive among groups. We need to bring all of these groups back together and fight this epidemic of hate together, because it is not just antisemitism, it’s Islamophobia, anti-LGBTQ hate — all these that we have been fighting, because it’s all connected,” he said.

The “Gold Digger” rapper, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2020, has repeatedly espoused antisemitic rhetoric and conspiracy theories in recent years. Last year, his account on X, formerly known as Twitter, was temporarily suspended after the performer wrote that he was going “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”

The 46-year-old entertainer — who dined with former President Trump and white nationalist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago last year — has also praised Nazis and Adolf Hitler. 

The warning signs of escalating hate against the Jewish community were there, according to Emhoff.

“I knew that antisemitism was clearly on the rise,” the second gentleman told Deadline. 

“We saw that with Charlottesville and Tree of Life and so on through the first couple of years. We saw what [West] said and Nick Fuentes and the banner on our freeway, the 405. I knew that I needed personally to use this platform to do something more,” he said.

Earlier this year, the Anti-Defamation League reported a significant increase in antisemitic incidents in the U.S. following the Oct. 7 attack against Israel by Hamas, citing a nearly 400 percent year-over-year increase.

“People are looking at American Jews and placing responsibility on those Jews for actions of the Israeli government that they don’t agree with, and they are basically equating those actions they don’t agree with with the Jewish people,” Emhoff said when asked for the reason behind the increase in antisemitic hate incidents.

“And a lot of that is directed at Jewish students at college campuses. And you’re seeing the protests, and you’re seeing the slogans,” Emhoff said.

“There’s a whole inability of many people to hold more than one or two things in their head at the same time, and they are conflating issues,” he added.