Snoop Dogg said Saturday he wasn't threatening Gayle King when he said King should "back off, b----, before we come get you" for mentioning Kobe Bryant's rape allegation.
In an Instagram video with the caption "P. S. A. From the peoples champ now carry on and be nice to others," the rapper said he's a "non-violent person" and was just pointing out that King's line of questioning was "disrespectful" in the wake of the NBA legend and his daughter, 13-year-old Gianna Bryant, dying in a helicopter crash.
"When I said what I said, I spoke for the people who felt like Gayle was very disrespectful towards Kobe Bryant and his family," Snoop Dogg said.
"Now with that being said, what do I look like, wanting some harm to come to a 70-year-old woman? I was raised way better than that. I don’t want no harm to come to her and I didn’t threaten her. All I did was say, ‘Check it out, you outta pocket for what you doing and we watching you. Have a little bit more respect for Vanessa, her babies and Kobe Bryant’s legacy.’”
The video was referencing an Instagram post from Wednesday in which Snoop Dogg criticized King for asking retired WNBA star Lisa Leslie in an interview on "CBS This Morning" if she thought Kobe Bryant's legacy was "complicated" by a 2003 sexual assault charge.
"What do you gain from that? I swear to god, we the worst. We the f------ worst," he said in the Wednesday video. "We expect more from you, Gayle," he said in the Wednesday video. "Why y’all attacking us? We your people! You ain’t come after f------ Harvey Weinstein, asking them dumb-ass questions. I get sick of y'all."
After insulting King with more expletives, he ended the video with "back off, b----, before we come get you."
Bryant was accused in 2003 of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old hotel employee in Colorado. He was charged with rape, but the case was dropped after the accuser declined to testify. A civil suit was later settled. The NBA star, who married his wife, Vanessa, in 2001, admitted to having had sex with the woman, but insisted that it was consensual.
King has been receiving death threats over her Kobe Bryant question, according to Oprah Winfrey, King's best friend.
"She is not doing well. May I say she is not doing well because she has now death threats, and now has to travel with security, and she's feeling very much attacked," a tearful Winfrey said Friday on "TODAY with Hoda & Jenna."
King responded to the backlash on Thursday, saying the clip that was used to promote her interview with Leslie was taken out of context.
"I know that if I had only seen the clip that you saw, I would be extremely angry with me too. I am mortified. I'm embarrassed and I am very angry," she said in a video posted to Twitter, directly addressing her critics. "Unbeknownst to me, my network put up a clip from a very wide-ranging interview, totally taken out of context and when you see it that way, it's very jarring."
A spokesperson for CBS acknowledged that the excerpt the network posted online "did not reflect the nature and tone of the full interview."
"Gayle conducted a thoughtful, wide-ranging interview with Lisa Leslie about the legacy of Kobe Bryant," the statement read. "We are addressing the internal process that led to this and changes have already been made."
President of CBS News Susan Zirinsky on Sunday defended the interview as "comprehensive and thoughtful" while denouncing the threats against King.
"We are a country where differences of opinion are welcome — but hateful and dangerous threats are completely unacceptable," Zirinsky said in a statement. "We fully support Gayle King and her integrity as a journalist. We find the threats against her or any journalist doing their job reprehensible."
