Jason Whitlock: The left is 'whipping and slashing' Kanye West like Kunta Kinte because he won't say he's a left-wing liberal

BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock compared the left's treatment of superstar musical artist Kanye West to Kunta Kinte, a fictional slave character from the 1970s miniseries "Roots," in an interview Thursday on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight." Whitlock appeared on the program to react to an hour-long interview West gave to Carlson.

"That's a man wrestling with his faith in God and wrestling with the fame that makes him money and makes him rich," Whitlock said of West, who legally changed his first name to Ye.

"Throughout that interview tonight, I heard a guy that's a devout Christian, and I heard a guy that is cursed with the disease of fame. It's undermined his ability to be a good father, it has undermined his ability to be a good husband, it's undermined his happiness. He wants to be a Christian, and the things he said about his faith and wearing the lanyard with the ultrasound, all of that — I love that about Kanye West," he continued.

In the wide-ranging interview, the "I Am a God" rapper discussed the recent controversy over his decision to wear a "White Lives Matter" shirt to a fashion show, which outraged and disgusted progressives. He was accused of promoting "anti-blackness" and of behaving dangerously and irresponsibly. West said he wore the "White Lives Matter" shirt because "they do," adding that his dad reached out to him about it and they both thought it was hilarious.

“I thought the shirt was a funny shirt. I thought the idea of wearing it was funny. And I said, ‘Dad, why do you think it was funny?’ And he said, ‘Just a black man stating the obvious,’” West told Carlson.

Whitlock said the left is frightened that a cultural icon like Ye West is rejecting their worldview, and that's what provoked the intense backlash.

"It scares the heck out of the left to see someone like Kanye West — that popular, that influential, his skin color — that has those Christian values, because that's what's really under attack. His Christian values. It scares them. They don't want him to survive. They are using him," Whitlock said.

He continued: "I'm going to use an analogy. Kunta Kinte in 'Roots.' They got him out on a tree and they are whipping him, 'What's your name?' And they want him to say 'left-wing liberal,' and he won't say it. He keeps saying, 'I like Trump. I like God. I'm a Christian.' And they keep whipping and slashing him, and they are trying to make this man bow down to the liberal orthodoxy. And they are doing it as a message to me and everybody else: If you don't get in line with what we want you to think, every black man, every heterosexual black man, every black man with Christian values, we will beat you into a pulp. Kanye's man enough to stand up. I wish more men were."

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(h/t: RealClearPolitics)