Ex-TMZ Staffer Says Star Praised Hitler, Podcast Kills Interview

Van Lathan Jr.—who confronted Kanye West during his infamous 2018 rant at TMZ’s office when West said 400 years of slavery “sounds like a choice”—alleged Tuesday on his podcast, Higher Learning, that West also said he loved Hitler and Nazis, but those remarks were edited out.

Lathan, who previously worked for TMZ, said he wasn’t surprised about West’s anti-Semitic posts on Instagram and Twitter over the weekend because he knew about West’s alleged beliefs from their interaction at TMZ.

Lathan said West “said something like, ‘I love Hitler, I love Nazis,’ something to that effect. And they took it out of the interview for whatever reason—it wasn’t my decision,” after some sort of conversation with West.

Lathan claimed that one of the producers at TMZ’s offices stood up and confronted West, like Lathan did, and said, “I’m Jewish and that is offensive to me, what you just said.”

Lathan also claimed TMZ’s videos showing his confrontation with West was edited; producers allegedly took out Lathan’s mentioning of people who died “because of Nazism and Hitler” because “it wouldn’t have made sense unless they kept in Kanye saying he loved Hitler and the Nazis.”

West does reference Jewish people and the Holocaust in his chat with TMZ, equating the Holocaust’s association with Jews to slavery’s association with Black people, and claiming that “prison is something” that unites “Blacks and whites as one race.”

Forbes has reached out to TMZ and West for comment.