‘Good Morning Britain’ pulled the plug on of its guests on Wednesday morning (2 May), after a heated debate about Kanye West’s latest controversy descended into “unpleasant and vile rhetoric”.
Following Kanye’s shocking suggestion that 400 years of slavery “sounds like a choice”, ‘GMB’ featured a debate with journalist Trisha Goddard and activist Jesse Lee Peterson.
During the impassioned discussion, Peterson suggested that there was “no such thing as racism”, to which Trisha Goddard asked: “Racism exists, to say that it’s something someone made up is absolutely ridiculous. What do you think the KKK stands for then?”
Peterson then went on to compare the KKK to the Black Lives Matter activist group, saying they were both “evil organisations”, before saying that the latter is a “far-left, liberal, radical agitated organisation founded by a bunch of lesbians and homosexuals”, insisting it was “no different” to the KKK.
At this point presenter Piers Morgan cut in, telling Peterson: “You’re now descending into extremely unpleasant and frankly vile rhetoric. And I don’t know why you think this is appropriate to say this on national television.”
Co-host Susanna Reid then added even holding these opinions was inappropriate, while Piers continued: “What you just said is completely unacceptable.”
Piers then told viewers: “We would get a response from him but we’ve cut his microphone because he was spewing such unpleasant stuff. We don’t mind having a proper debate but when it descends into rampant homophobia, you don’t get to say any more on this programme. You get your mic removed.”
The ‘GMB’ debate was sparked by an interview rapper Kanye West recently gave to TMZ, in which he said: “When you hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years?! That sounds like a choice. You was there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all. It’s like we’re mentally in prison.
“I like the word ‘prison’ because ‘slavery’ goes too direct to the idea of blacks. Slavery is to blacks as the Holocaust is to Jews.
“Prison is something that unites as one race, blacks and whites, that we’re the human race.”
‘Good Morning Britain’ airs every weekday from 6am on ITV.