Kanye West’s Controversial Interview With ‘Drink Champs’ Gets Pulled from YouTube
Kanye West’s controversial Drink Champs interview has been pulled from both YouTube and the Revolt franchise’s website. After receiving backlash for West’s antisemitic comments and lies about the death of George Floyd, Drink Champs has made the video private on YouTube.
On Monday afternoon, Rolling Stone attempted to access the YouTube link to the video — which continues to be teased on both Drink Champs and its hosts’ social media accounts — and was redirected to a page that shared that “this video is private” and “unavailable.” (Some users on Twitter noticed its removal as early as 4 p.m. ET on Monday.)
Earlier in the day, the podcast was removed from both Spotify and Apple Music, but had remained on YouTube in its entirety.
“We actually posted it and saw that this was the wrong edit, took it down, and then it got reposted again with those same comments that was there,” N.O.R.E, one of the podcast’s hosts, said on The Breakfast Club after apologizing for the contents of his interview. “So it was a mistake on our behalf, on our team’s behalf. Because we don’t edit nothing… but we will start from here on out, because we understand that’s people that’s hurt out there.”
On Drink Champs, West followed up a series of antisemitic posts with further comments about his belief that Jews control the media and falsely claimed that George Floyd died from fentanyl rather than a police officer’s knee on Floyd’s neck.
N.O.R.E and Drink Champs have since kept up their posts about the West interview.
Floyd’s family said that they’re considering suing West with Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Floyd family, telling Rolling Stone they would know by the end of the week what claims they have and said the Floyd family feels “absolutely betrayed by his comments.”
The Drink Champs drama also comes as he agreed to purchase Parler, the right-wing clone of Twitter.