Trevor Noah weighed in on the Kim Kardashian–Kanye West–Pete Davidson drama on Tuesday’s The Daily Show.
The TV host, who grew up in an abusive home, spoke of the broader implications of West fighting with his ex-wife and her new boyfriend. West, who shares four children with Kardashian, reacted to The Daily Show dialogue on social media using a racial slur, leading to further back-and-forth.
Noah said the story “started very much in the land of tabloid,” but has become something “that more people should pay attention to.” He then gave the backstory on how Kimye split, Kardashian started dating Davidson many months later and West tried to win back his ex but now is just “harassing Kim.” Noah also talked about West’s mental health and bipolar diagnosis.
“Over time, Kanye has become more and more belligerent in how he tries to get Kim back,” Noah noted, pointing to the Claymation music video in which he kidnaps and kills Davidson. “Kanye doesn’t understand is what we’re seeing … makes you uncomfortable, man.”
While speaking of West’s “harassment of Kim,” Noah said he knows people will say: “‘Kim Kardashian — she loves publicity, she loves celebrity, she loves all of this’ …. Yeah, and I get it. There is also an element of a woman saying to her ex, ‘Hey, please leave me alone.'”
Noah talked about how the situation “keeps on escalating” with Davidson’s “I’m in your wife’s bed” texts to West over the weekend. And also how people think it’s a publicity stunt for Kardashian’s new Hulu show.
“Two things can be true: Kim likes publicity [and] Kim is also being harassed,” Noah said. “Those things can be happening at the same time … I see a woman who wants to live her life without being harassed by [her] ex-husband.”
He continued, “You may not feel sorry for Kim because she’s rich and famous, because of the way she dresses, because she appropriates Black culture, because she tells women they’re lazy… Whatever — you hate her. But what she’s going through is terrifying to watch, and it shines a spotlight on what so many women go through when they choose to leave.”
He added, “People always say that phrase to women: ‘Why didn’t you leave?’ … Because a lot of women realize, when they do leave, the guy will get even crazier.”
Noah said what the public is seeing through all this is “one of the most powerful, one of the richest women in the world unable to get her ex to stop texting her, chasing after her, to stop harassing her. Just think about that for a moment. Think about how powerful Kim Kardashian is and she can’t get that to happen.”
He also spoke about the violence in his own home in South Africa, from when he was 9 to 16. He recalled people always told his mother she was “overreacting” and told her to “calm down” when she was being abused by Noah’s stepfather.
“I’ll never forget one day I got a call from my brother, ‘Mom has just been shot in the head,” he recalled. The gunman was his abusive stepfather who shot Noah’s mom as she walked home from church with family. They were divorced at the time.
Noah said he wasn’t sharing the story to make the Kardashian-West drama about him — or to say West is a bad guy and will do the same thing.
“But as a society, we have to ask ourselves questions: Do we wish to stand by and watch a car crash when we thought we saw it coming? Or do we at least want to say, ‘Slow down, let’s all put our hazards on, because there’s a storm right now and some s*** might go down,'” he asked.
He concluded, “If Kim cannot escape this, then what chance do normal women have?”
After Noah’s take, West reacted in a social media post. Alongside an image of search results for Noah, Ye wrote, “All in together now… K**n baya my lord k**n baya k**n baya my lord k**n baya Oooo’ lord k**n baya,” using a racial slur for a Black person against mixed-race Noah.
Noah then posted a response in the comments of West’s post.
“There are few artists who have had more of an impact on me than you Ye,” he wrote. “You took samples and turned them into symphonies. You took your pain and through the wire turned it into performance perfection. I thought differently about how I spend my money because of you, I learned to protect my child-like creativity from grown thoughts because of you, s*** I still smile every time I put on my seatbelt because of you. You’re an indelible part of my life Ye.”
He said that “is why it breaks my heart to see you like this. I don’t care if you support Trump and I don’t care if you roast Pete. I do however care when I see you on a path that’s dangerously close to peril and pain.”
As for West’s use of the slur, “Clearly some people graduate but we still stupid. Don’t ever forget, the biggest trick racists ever played on Black people was teaching us to strip each other of our Blackness whenever we disagree. Tricking us into dividing ourselves up into splinters so that we would never unite into a powerful rod.”
West has since deleted his Instagram post about Noah, as he tends to do. He’s left a few other new ones up, including one in which expresses worry that “Skete,” his nickname for the Saturday Night Live comedian, will get Kardashian hooked on drugs. He’s also posted a few photos of D.L. Hughley, who he has also been fighting with after Hughley said West was “stalking” Kardashian.
