The man who Kanye West named while calling out Lizzo in a rambling sit-down with Tucker Carlson last week is now responding — and he’s not happy.
Harley Pasternak is a celebrity fitness trainer who boasts a bevy of high-profile clients including Ye, Lizzo, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kim Kardashian. On Monday night, he revealed that he has spoken to the Chicago-born rapper about his unsettling public comments. And now, Harley is moving on from Ye.
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This all came about after Kanye called out Lizzo during that Tucker Carlson Tonight interview. Perezcious readers will recall how during Ye’s unsolicited commentary about the Truth Hurts pop star’s body, he name-dropped Pasternak:
“Lizzo works with my trainer, a friend of mine, Harley Pasternak. When Lizzo loses 10 pounds and announces it, bots… attack her for losing weight, because the media wants to put out a perception that being overweight is the new goal, when it’s actually unhealthy.”
Kanye added:
“It’s the genocide of the Black race.”
That did not sit well with Harley. And things got even worse when Ye made his antisemitic “death con 3” comment on Twitter days after the Tucker interview.
Pasternak, who is Jewish, spoke to Newsweek about Kanye’s offensive comments:
“I think Kanye has a history of mental health issues, and it appears that he’s probably going through an episode right now. If people continue to give him a platform to discuss hateful, antisemitic rhetoric, they’re complicit, so I applaud Facebook and Twitter.”
Ye’s accounts were temporarily locked on both Twitter and Instagram. He’s since taken to the alt-right’s safer harbor of YouTube.
Harley told the outlet that he and Kanye spoke for “about five hours” on Sunday. It sounds like that conversation was not very productive. Pasternak alleged Ye was “very incoherent” and struggling to accept reality:
“I spoke to Kanye for about five hours yesterday and his communication is very incoherent at this point. It doesn’t forgive someone for being antisemitic. In fact, the lack of outrage over his tweet from people is very sad, regardless of whether he’s mentally ill or not. It’s not acceptable.”
Oof…
Harley summed it up with dismay at the reaction to Ye’s statement, in which he said he was going to go “death con 3 on Jewish people”:
“As someone who’s been his friend for 15 years, I will not speak with him again until he issues a formal apology. He seems like he’s either [having] or is on the verge of a mental break. This is a person who probably struggled understanding reality from not reality even in the best of times, and I’m extraordinarily saddened by the lack of outrage. The amount of outrage that came from a T-shirt that he wore a few days earlier was a millionfold more vocal than the tweet that he implied that he was going to wipe out a race of people.”
Wow.
FYI, Pasternak says he has not spoken to Lizzo about Kanye’s comments. She has reacted publicly to them, though.
Such a tense situation. Ugh.
[Image via Harley Pasternak/Instagram/Late Late Show/YouTube.]
