Milo Yiannopoulos has resigned from Breitbart News, he announced Tuesday.
Yiannopoulos’ $250,000 book deal with Simon & Schuster was pulled and he was uninvited from speaking at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference after the Reagan Battalion, a conservative news source, tweeted video of Yiannopoulos defending older men having sexual relations with young boys.
Yiannopoulos said in a statement Tuesday he was resigning as the Technology Editor at Breitbart News, the news platform of the alt-right. He has engaged in derogatory speech against several groups, including transsexuals, but paints himself as a provocateur defending free speech. He has been permanently banned from Twitter for leading racist harassment against Leslie Jones after the actress and comedian appeared in the female reboot of Ghostbusters.
“Breitbart News has stood by me when others caved,” Yiannopoulos said in the statement.
“I would be wrong to allow my poor choice of words to detract from my colleagues’ important reporting, so today I am resigning from Breitbart, effective immediately,” he continued. “The decision is mine alone.”
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Yiannopoulos said in a press conference that he would be announcing a news venture of his own in the next couple of weeks. He said he would focus less on journalism and more on “education and entertainment.”
In the videos, which are not new but went viral over the weekend, Yiannopoulos talked about having sex with older men as a teenager, suggested pedophilia does not apply to minors under the age of 18 but who have gone through puberty and suggested a priest who had relations with him when he was a teenager improved his sexual prowess.
The videos contain graphic language.