For the third time in the last decade, Dave Chappelle was tapped by Saturday Night Live to host a post-election episode. And while he did touch on the results of the midterms, as well as pondered what the future holds for Donald Trump, the comedian centered most of his 15-minute monologue around Kanye West and the controversy surrounding his recent anti-Semitic comments.
“I renounce anti-Semitism in all its forms – that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time,” said Chappelle to open his monologue. “I’ve probably been doing this for 35 years, and early in my career I learned that there are two words in the English language you should never say together in sequence, and they are: The Jews.”
Chappelle remarked how he often came to West’s defense in the past, but this time “I wanted to see what happens first.” He then noted the irony of adidas ending their collaboration with West: “adidas was founded by Nazis, and they were offended.”
“It’s a big deal, [West] had broken the show business rules,” Chappelle continued, “You know, the rules of perception. If they’re Black, then it’s a gang. If they’re Italian, it’s a mob. If they’re Jewish, it’s a coincidence, and you should never speak about it.”
At another point in the monologue, Chappelle said, “I don’t think Kanye is crazy, he’s possibly not well.”
And yet Chappelle concluded his comments on West by suggesting that some of the rapper’s criticisms was not without merit. “I’ve been to Hollywood, this is just what I saw. It’s a lot of Jews. Like a lot,” he said. “There’s a lot of Black people in Ferguson, Missouri, doesn’t mean they run the place. You might go out in Hollywood and you might start connecting some kind of lines and you might adopt the delusion that Jews run show business. It’s not a crazy thing to think but it’s a crazy thing to say out loud.”
Elsewhere in his monologue, Chappelle called Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker “observably stupid,” noted the irony in Donald Trump stealing classified documents from “work” — especially since he was notorious for never reading during his tenure in the Oval Office, and lauded the Ukraine’s success in the battlefield agains Russia.
Watch Chappelle’s full monologue below. Next month, Chappelle will team up with Chris Rock for a series of co-headlining tour dates (get tickets here).