Matt Damon on Kanye West’s Anti-Bush Outburst: “I Let Out a Cheer”

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Monday’s Access Hollywood teased with a clip of rapper Kanye West’s blast on Friday’s Concert for Hurricane Relief broadcast on several NBC channels, "George Bush doesn't care about black people," followed by a clip of actor Matt Damon: “I let out a cheer.” The syndicated NBC Productions program also featured a clip of this ludicrous claim from West on the fund-raising show: “We already realize a lot of the people that could help are at war right now fighting another way and they’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us.” (For more about West's allegations, check this Friday night NewsBusters posting by Tim Graham.)

A few minutes later on Access Hollywood, co-host Nancy O’Dell touted how “it was Kanye West’s anti-Bush remarks that caught the attention of Matt Damon and Susan Sarandon in Italy” at the Venice Film Festival. Viewers then saw this from actress Susan Sarandon as she stood at some sort of an event: “I don’t think that’s an original thought, but it’s probably true.” (With Access Hollywood’s quick cut editing, it’s hard to know what people are specifically referring to.)

Immediately after Sarandon, Access Hollywood played a longer soundbite from Damon who claimed the White House press corps is too nice to Bush and thus “not one of them’s an honest journalist.” Full quote follows, as well as Colin Farrell’s charge that white people would have been rescued faster.

Damon’s soundbite in full, as he sat in front of a poster for a movie (with title obscured): “So this guy just with this moment, you know, on live television made a statement that hopefully now Bush will come out and address because he doesn’t have to address anything else because, you know, the, you know, the White House press corps, you know, they should all have their credentials taken away. Not one of them’s an honest journalist, not one of them asks a question of the guy.”

At another point, Access Hollywood played this clip from actor Colin Farrell at a fund-raiser in Miami held for Katrina’s victims: “If it was a bunch on white people on roofs in the Hamptons, I don’t have any f[bleep]ing doubt there would have been every single helicopter, every plane, every single means that the government has to help these people.”