Van Lathan on Getting Fired from TMZ, Addresses Rumor He Choked Right-Wing Co-Worker (Part 9)

okay so that happens and you know i feel like your your tmz career continued to grow right you had the uh you know van lathan's uh red pill podcast you know so you were given like your own kind of spin-off show i've been doing that before the kai thing okay before okay but then but the show kept going yeah yeah you had more that helped everything yeah exactly you had more visibility you had bigger guests on the show everything's going well then october 2019 happens now the details of this are relatively sketchy okay because the incident that we're talking about was not actually broadcast no it wasn't there's video of it though okay yeah but there's screenshots there's screenshots yeah and the screenshots that i saw was your hands around one of your co-workers necks okay is that is that accurate no it's not nah okay so apparently something happened with michael babcock one of your co-workers white guy who's relatively on the conservative side of things right right right wing so tell me what happened leading up to the incident so i so like that morning there was a story and it was about ellen degeneres and um hanging out with like george w bush right and i got all pissed off about it because you know george w bush did a fantastic career makeover he did a fantastic career makeover uh in sort of rebranding himself as not a war criminal and not the guy who left my cousins and them drowning in uh flood waters with [ __ ] snakes and alligators in them and he was just like a president that just wasn't as bad as trump and he liked the paint and he did a fantastic rebrand and everybody was in on it like everybody was like michelle obama having fun with him and all that and those people are entitled to that but for me being from down there and having seen the situation is just more difficult for me so ella degeneres paddling around with with george w bush she's entitled to do that she doesn't have to she's from new orleans too like she doesn't like she doesn't she doesn't have to but for me it's like [ __ ] george w bush not i don't hope anything bad happens to him but like i'm off it forever right it's not my thing um so i went i get super into that earlier in the show like tmz live happens in the middle of the day tmz the television show is like first thing in the morning like 6 45 like when we first come in and then after that i said i don't want to talk about this on tmz live i said it's too personal it's too upsetting i don't want to talk about this on tmz live i don't and they kept asking me it's like i don't want to talk about it i don't want to talk about it they kept asking me anyway i can't remember exactly what happened during this segment but during the segment uh mike kept shouting over me talking over me um and because he was in the host share that day harvey wasn't there i haven't seen harvey since before that day harvey wasn't there mike was hosting with charles now to understand this entire situation i have to understand the relationship between me and mike mike was by far my closest friend at tmz okay not even me and mike still talk all the time like michael send me random stuff uh just random stuff about reminiscing and all of that me and mike were thick as thieves anybody would say it was van and mike babcock we worked in the same place we were all on the sports team me mike uh lucas all of us we were tight a tight group such a tight group that it became like an hr thing like y'all got a little boys club over in sports they would tell us um so when i say that to say that what happened in the office could have only happened between me and mike because of the familiarity that existed with us right so mike after the thing is over i felt like he was talking to me in a [ __ ] up way right in front of everyone so i'm pissed no doubt i go over there and i put my hands i come up from behind him because he's in the host seat and i put my hands on his shoulders like my hands weren't like this they were like this and i'm just actually putting my hands on the shoulder so i can lean over and talk to him if you watch the video you'll see it i say something i say go ahead give it to me this is the picture right here so that right there that's the that that freeze frame right there is because he's turned so my hands were like this right and then he turned and i have my hand right there so but we'll show me that picture again and and show it show it to the show it to the audience oh yeah yeah we'll put up the picture yeah put up the picture if i if i wanted to if i want i'm whispering in his ear i'm literally whispering in his ear if i wanted to if i wanted to come up behind him and choke him i could have come up behind him and put him in a sleeper hole i could have come up behind him and put my hands around his throat there's no way i would ever hurt mike there's no way no one in that office no one in that office believes that i was a physical threat to anybody in the office like just nobody believes that it's it's like it's it's kind of a thing um but yeah so that happens i wish minnesota yo dawg seriously that was too much that was [ __ ] up you know you can't talk to me like that and if if you watch the whole video he says something he turns around he turns around like this and then he actually moves my hand and then i move it like literally when he when he when he he moves my hand and then when he moves my hand i move it like i move i move my hand i like i actually move it out of the way i'm like okay cool and then i i actually when i leave i actually pat him and then i point and i go back to my seat charles it wasn't actually that the whole time that that's happening charles is laughing what happened was when when i walked away i did say to him i told him i didn't told you now don't [ __ ] with me like that not again like do not do that to me again don't talk to me like that again and at that point charles felt like he had gone too far and he said man go home it's the last time i've ever been in tmz okay so you got sent home that day and you thought okay disagreement at work not a huge deal mm-hmm uh but then i guess you had to meet with the attorneys they called yeah they called you they called you yeah to talk about the situation [Music] at that point did you think that things had escalated beyond what you thought no no it wasn't the attorneys at first it was hr when they mentioned physical contact i was surprised because i it when they were like yo this is a like a physical thing i was like like what do you mean she was like well you grabbed him i was like i grabbed him i was like i put my hands on his shoulders i put my hands on my shoulders all the time like it's like like it was it was like a i would go over to mike like if i was whispering some of the story i put my hand on the show to talk to him i did i was like i had no [ __ ] clue and i was like oh [ __ ] this is [ __ ] real um and uh they were like we're gonna take a couple of days and like we're gonna decide whatever is that's going on and stuff okay well were you able to get michael to kind of step in on your behalf and say hey listen it's cool he didn't grab me we're friends this is being blown out of proportion i want to speak up on on van's behalf or he claims he did i mean i have no choice but to like believe him but like uh i wouldn't i wouldn't not believe him you know what i mean like me and him were talking throughout the whole thing like his girl reached out to me like mike's like like everyone like mike was might call me on the phone crying he's like i cannot believe that this this was like a weird thing that was going on and it was being it was just like a weird occurrence like a weird happening but me and him i had a going away party like after after i was actually fired right because what happened was this a couple of days into that they start we're going to look at it we're going to do this we're going to do that and then they uh decide okay well um [Music] like do you want to say anything or do you want to do anything or did you want to do this or do that i was like nah not really and they were like all right well uh we're gonna have to go ahead and terminate you and i was like okay cool like literally i was like all right cool um and then they they they they let me go and my co-workers at tmz threw me a going away party uh because like maybe like the next week it was quiet but then so they let me go maybe on like a friday then that whole next week it was quiet and then that weekend my co-workers got together and threw me a going away party that they had that next saturday was michael babcock there yes okay yeah he was at the party yeah um like a lot of them were what happened was they posted the pictures of the party on instagram they look like they start going around monday the page six story came out and so either the page six story came from me relaying parts of the story to somebody that was at that party and then they talked to page six or tmz wanted to announce that i was gone before i got a chance to say anything about it and then they leaked it to page six but then the pay six story came out that my i had a guy call me from page six that monday or maybe that sunday and it was that monday morning and say that like they were doing a story on what happened yeah because i mean tmz remember there was the whole there was a big piece that was about tmz and some of the you know what they felt was some shady business practices and so forth of getting stories um was the new yorker who put that out i can't remember it was yeah it was the new yorker i think it was new yorker yeah and i remember there was there was a certain level of heat on tmz which i'm not sure exactly about the timing but almost felt like hey listen we're taking some heat over here so let's just do some damage control and not potentially have this whole van latham thing you know maybe tie into this it's not whatever no that's not what it was yeah it wouldn't have been it wouldn't have been uh a bigger deal over that it just wouldn't have um mike wouldn't have made a big deal about it i wouldn't have made a big deal about it this is what that was really about and we all know it's not a big deal like i don't there's no real beef between me in the office right now uh the only the only thing that i would be so like when my dad passed away my father passed away this year like everybody from tmz reached out like except for harvey like ev everyone hit me up like hey van your dad passed away and like i'm about they knew everybody that i had worked there for a long time they knew that my father was sick they knew that uh he had had heart problems i had to take time sometimes to deal with him and help him and do all that stuff uh so my dad passed away it was still love from everyone when we won the academy award everyone still reached out the only person who hasn't reached out really threat that entire time has been harvey but the real situation was that i was at the end of a contract uh that happened in october i think the contract was up in november i had already informed tmz that i was not returning oh really yeah aha okay yeah and that was the reason why you were not coming back to tm too much other [ __ ] okay like like it it uh it that summer like my like i had too many other opportunities the kind of thing that happened it changed my life i had a lot of other things i could go do i wanted to explore those things i remember you know there was some talk about maybe doing some further stuff with harvey and with tmz and it just we could never get it to work right because it always was stuff that i would have to go do that stuff and then come and be in the office every day and be on the show every day and i had had kind of enough of that and so i had already said that i'm not resigning the contract and so with that situation you want to save a little money not pay me the last couple of months or whatever whatever you have an out go ahead and get it done nobody was upset they weren't upset i wasn't upset that i had to leave gotcha

Channel: djvlad

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Id: 1lks7ZPjuHA

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 27 2021