Biden responds to Kanye

US President Joe Biden called on American political leaders to reject antisemitism “wherever it hides,” after troubled rapper Kanye West publicly declared his admiration for Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

In a tweet on Friday, Biden declared that “The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides.”

“Silence is complicity,” Biden concluded.
 

I just want to make a few things clear:

The Holocaust happened.

Hitler was a demonic figure.

And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides.

Silence is complicity.

— President Biden (@POTUS) December 2, 2022

While Biden’s tweet did not reference Kanye West, it came a day after the rapper was suspended from Twitter for posting an image of the Star of David intertwined with a swastika. Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who earlier reinstated West’s account after he was suspended for threatening “Jewish people,” declared that the image “violated our rule against incitement to violence.”

On Wednesday, West appeared on Alex Jones’ Infowars show, where he told the infamous right-wing host that “there’s a lot of things that I love about Hitler,” and that people should “stop dissing Nazis all the time.” Jones attempted to push back against the hooded rapper’s remarks, accusing him of harboring a “little bit of a Hitler fetish.”

West, who some commentators have insisted is mentally ill, recently announced that he would be running for the US presidency in 2024. West dined with likely Republican candidate Donald Trump late last month, with Trump telling him that his campaign would ultimately fail.

West brought right-wing podcaster and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes to the dinner in question, outraging Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans. Trump himself declared that he didn’t know Fuentes prior to the meal and reportedly accused West of trying to“f**k him” by bringing such a politically toxic figure to the meeting. 

Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative author and internet troll now working as West’s campaign manager, boasted that he helped organize the dinner “just to make Trump’s life miserable.”