The former TMZEmployee Van Lathan reported on October 11 in his “higher learning”Podcast that Kanye West made it clear his love for Adolf Hitler during a visit to the TMZ office in 2018. In the podcast, Van Lathan and his interlocutor Rachel Lindsay talk about West’s anti-Semitic tweet, among other things. Lathan commented: “[Ich] heard him say that stuff before…I knew it was in him because when he came to TMZ he said that stuff and they took it out of the interview.”
Lathan is referring to a 2018 interview in which Kanye said, “When you hear about slavery for 400 years. 400 years?! That sounds like a decision.”
“You hear about slavery for 400 years. 400 years?! That sounds like a choice.”
“Like you was there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all?!” pic.twitter.com/T5I8XUgImk
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) May 1, 2018
These well-known sentences by West were still shown. But others were cut out, at least according to Van Lathan. So, according to him, West has something along the lines of “I love Hitler. I love Nazis.” Van Lathan’s reply, in which he is said to have said that 12 million people died at the hands of the Nazis and then talk about slavery, was thus edited out because that part would not have made sense without West’s alleged “I love Hitler” comments. However, there is another clip in which Van Lathan gets upset with West and says to him: “I think what you are doing is the absence of thinking. […] There are consequences behind everything you say. […] I’m incredibly hurt that you turned into something that wasn’t real to me. You have to be responsible.”
— Elliott Wilson (@ElliottWilson) May 1, 2018