Dave Chappelle Focuses 'Saturday Night Live' Monologue on Kanye West Controversy

Dave Chappelle hit the Studio 8H stage over the weekend for his third time as Saturday Night Live host, and tackled one of the hot button issues to captivate the nation in recent weeks -- Kanye "Ye" West's antisemitism controversy.

"Before I start tonight, I just wanted to read a brief statement that I prepared," Chappelle said as he took the stage, leading some to believe it would be a statement about his own controversial remarks regarding transgender people, which lead to protests and public outcry.

However, the monologue went in a different direction as he read from a note card, "I have denounced antisemitism in all its forms, and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community."

"And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time," Chappelle continued with a laugh. "I got to tell you guys, I probably been doing this 35 years now, and early in my career, I learned that there were two words in the English language that you should never say together in sequence, and those words are 'The' and 'Jews.' I've never heard someone do good after they said that."

"Kanye's gotten into some scrapes before and normally, when he's in trouble, I pull up immediately," he continued. "But this time, I was like, 'You know what? Let me see what's going to happen first.'"

Chappelle recalled how West's drama first began, explaining, "Vaguely, I remember it started with a tweet, a strange tweet. It was like, 'I'm feeling a little sleepy. I'm going to get me some rest, but when I wake up, I'm going to go deaf con three on the Jews!' And then he just went to bed. I was up all night worried, 'What is he trying to do to the Jews?'"

Chappelle went on to say how he grew up around Jewish people, and had a lot of Jewish friends as a kid, so he never felt their religious customs were strange and he never felt scared of Jewish culture. 

However, West "woke up from that nap and went right to work," Chappelle joked, recalling his Drink Champs interview in which West specifically said he could spew antisemitic comments and Adidas would drop him. Then, Adidas dropped him.

"Ironically, Adidas was founded by Nazis, and they were offended!" Chappelle continued. "I guess the student surpassed the teacher."

SNL airs live coast-to-coast at 11:30 p.m. ET, 8:30 p.m. PT on NBC.

Check out the video below for more on the controversy surrounding West and his divisive remarks.

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