Jay-Z got political Saturday and lambasted Donald Trump’s reported “shithole” remarks about African countries as “disappointing — and hurtful.”
“Everyone feels anger,” he said on the debut of CNN’s “The Van Jones Show.” “After the anger it’s really hurtful because he’s like looking down on a whole population of people, and you’re so misinformed because these places have beautiful people. This is the leader of the free world speaking like this.”
“On the other side, this has been going on, this is how people talk, this is how they talk behind closed doors,” he added, referring to “closet racists.”
Trump reportedly slammed the African nations and Haiti during a discussion in the Oval Office about immigration. “Why do we want all these people from shithole countries coming here?” he asked, according to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
On Sunday, Trump appeared to respond to Jay-Z’s CNN interview on Twitter by requesting someone inform the rapper about “Black Unemployment.”
But during the CNN interview, Van Jones had asked Jay-Z whether Trump would be a good leader if he increased employment for blacks.
“No, because it’s not about money at the end of the day,” the rapper said. “Money doesn’t equate to happiness. That’s missing the whole point. You treat people like human beings. That’s the main point.”
He added: “My problem with government is I think they forget it’s real people behind these decisions that they’re making ... people going through ... real time in real pain. When you ignore that pain for so long, people act out and .... want to see something different, and that opens the door to what we’re living through now.”
Jay-Z also characterized the president as a “superbug,” apparently because his virulent power grew from societal efforts to merely cover up racism rather than addressing it.
“You don’t take care of the problem,” he said. “You don’t take the the trash out. You keep spraying whatever over it to make it acceptable. As those things grow, you create a superbug. Then now we have Donald Trump, the superbug,” he said.
“I’m being funny,” Jay-Z added. “Somewhere along his [Trump’s] lineage something happened to him, and he’s in pain and he’s expressing it in this sort of way.”
Asked about the #MeToo movement, Jay-Z said: “This had to happen to purge itself ... For it to get uncovered and the world to correct itself, this is what has to happen.”
The rapper also talked about his love for his wife, Beyonce, and his three children. He said the couple has fought to keep their marriage together despite complications because she’s his “soulmate.”
“We chose to fight for our love, for our family — to give our kids a different outcome, to break that cycle for black men and women,” he said. “We were never a celebrity couple, we were a couple who just happened to be celebrities. We are real people.”
This story has been updated with Trump’s tweet.