Kanye West Says ‘NBC Locked up Bill Cosby’

Amid the numerous tweets posted by Kanye West Monday night, the Yeezy founder began making some bizarre accusations. One of them involved disgraced comedian and actor Bill Cosby, who was sentenced to 3-10 years on charges of sexual assault in 2018.

At one point, West claimed that “NBC locked up Bill Cosby,” referring to the incarcerated comic, whose sitcom, The Cosby Show, used to air on NBC. The message directly followed a single tweet that read, “I love my wife,” followed by “My family must live next to me,” and finally, “It’s not up to [me] or NBC anymore.” The tirade started with several angry tweets directed towards his wife Kim Kardashian, his mother-in-law Kris Jenner, along with fellow celebrities Drake and Anna Wintour. Among the claims, West alleged that Kardashian and Jenner tried to get him locked up against his will, before claiming that Kardashian contacted a doctor to have him put away.

West also claimed that he was “locked up like [Nelson] Mandela,” echoing the similar sentiment he offered about Cosby. Additionally, he included a screenshot of one of his text messages to Jenner, where she asked him to address his emotional state. The flurry of tweets also comes after a reported rift had developed between West and the Kardashians following his announcement that he was running for president, which he declared on July 4 from his Twitter account.

During his first official campaign event in South Carolina, West ended up causing some controversy after he claimed that Harriet Tubman “never actually freed the slaves, she just had the slaves go work for other white people.” The remark more or less stunned the audience, given that Tubman was born a slave, and is celebrated for not only escaping slavery herself but also going back and freeing upwards of 300 slaves via the Underground Railroad.

The campaign event was held after it had been reported that West told campaign strategist Steve Kramer that he was out of the running. Kramer was one of the campaign staffers hired by West to get his name on the ballot in states like Florida and South Carolina, having missed the deadline in six other states. Kramer had previously claimed that the campaign team was “working over the weekend there, formalizing the FEC and other things that they’ve got to do when you have a lot of corporate lawyers involved,” he told New York Magazine.