Exclusive: Ye's 2005 'George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People' Moment Dissected in New Docuseries

Ye’s “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” statement during a 2005 Hurricane Katrina telethon gets the docuseries treatment on the next episode of CNN’s TV on the Edge.

In an exclusive clip from the episode, which is set to debut in full this Sunday, the “baffling” path Ye has taken in the nearly 20 years since that hugely impactful moment is dissected, with CNN contributor Van Jones, specifically, pointing to the disappointment he believes has been felt by many in more recent years.

“I have a lot of personal opinion about [Ye] in terms of the direction his life is going,” Jones says in the episode. “There’s something unhealthy and unhealed about him. He’s really hurt and disappointed a lot of people.”

Journalists Dexter Thomas and Jen Chaney also appear in the clip, with mentions of the changing meaning of “Kanye was right” and the 24-time Grammy winner’s alignment with MAGAism in the years since he gave voice to an issue felt deeply by many Americans during this period of the Bush era. The full TV on the Edge episode goes deep on not only the live TV moment itself, but also into the behind-the-scenes response to Ye’s decision to abandon the script while standing next to Mike Myers for NBC’s A Concert for Hurricane Relief event.

Also discussed at length is Ye’s unique importance as an artist, particularly with regards to his zeitgeist-shifting abilities throughout much of his career, as well as how Bush’s presidency was largely defined by 9/11 until the government’s disastrous Katrina response called into question any sense of nationalism or patriotism.

“I hate the way they portray us in the media,” Ye said at the time. “We see a Black family, it says they’re looting. We see a white family, it says they’re looking for food.”

During the still-riveting 2005 moment, Ye went on to question whether he was a hypocrite for wanting to turn away from what he was seeing on TV at the time, stating that authorities had been “given permission to go down and shoot us.” Briefly, Myers resumed the scripted proceedings, only for Ye to deliver the key line heard around the world, its impact still felt to this day: “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.”

Bush would later call this “one of the most disgusting moments of his presidency,” a remark that has itself been picked apart due to the fact that Bush’s presidency including multiple events one would assume would be far more qualifying of the “disgusting” descriptor, including the Katrina response itself or, say, 9/11. Ye, as fans know, nodded at the Bush moment again in 2016 with the release of his video for The Life of Pablo track “Famous.”

The Ye-focused TV on the Edge episode debuts this Sunday via CNN and also features insight from Big Freedia, Van Lathan, Rachel Lindsay, Anderson Cooper, and more. Below, see an exclusive clip from the episode.