Trevor Noah defended Kanye West against detractors this week and explained why he criticized the decision to ban the rapper from performing at the Grammys earlier this year when the comedian hosted.
"Human beings are a paradox," the "Daily Show" host said on the "Awards Circuit" podcast on Thursday. "We can love people who we hate, we can hate people who we love. Human beings as a whole are a complicated paradox. And so, I don’t like to live in a world where we constantly discard human beings like pieces of trash."
Noah had a run-in with West before the April Grammy Awards when the rapper threw a racial slur at him on social media after the host in a "Daily Show" segment accused him of "harassing" his ex Kim Kardashian.
The Grammys barred West from performing after his Instagram post, but the comedian, who hosted the awards show, tweeted in March that he had nothing to do with the decision and said he asked the Recording Academy to "counsel Kanye not cancel Kanye."
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"I’ve just become more comfortable speaking my mind in situations where I feel like the mob forgets that we’re dealing with human beings," Noah said on the podcast. "It’s easy to stand on the sidelines, see a train crash coming and say nothing about it. And then after the train crashes off the tracks, we say, ‘Oh, I saw that coming!’ Well, then why didn’t you say anything? Especially if you have some sort of platform, you have some sort of obligation to speak a truth. You know, see something and say something."
He said the rapper has made an "indelible impression" on him and his music has helped him through different periods in his life.
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"But then there are also moments where I go, like, ‘Man, Kanye, you, you’re going off the rails here.’ But I can still say that 'I care for you as a human being, that’s, that’s why I’m speaking out. I’m not going to not care for you, I’m not going to hate you all of a sudden.’ That’s how I try and see the world, that’s how I would hope people would see me."
He spoke out against cancel culture in the interview, saying everyone should have the opportunity to "redeem" themselves.
"I think we have gotten very comfortable discarding human beings, immediately tossing them away and making them irredeemable characters," he said. "When in fact, I think all of us should be afforded the opportunity to redeem ourselves. All of us should have an opportunity at redemption."
West has been widely criticized for his rhetoric against Kardashian and her former boyfriend Pete Davidson after West and Kardashian split. His latest remark came in a since-deleted Instagram post in which he jokingly declared through a fake New York Times front page that Davidson was "dead at age 28" after the "Saturday Night Live" alum broke up with Kardashian.
West has made other comments that seem to suggest violence toward Davidson, including a music video from earlier this year in which he rapped about beating "Pete Davidson’s a—." In the video, an animated version of West kidnaps and buries an animated Davidson alive.
