Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos appeared to speak tolerantly of pedophilia in video clips shared ahead of his speaking engagement at next week’s Conservative Political Action Conference.
The right-wing provocateur recalled his own sexual abuse as a teen and did not appear to outright condemn similar relationships between children and men on a 2016 episode of “The Drunken Peasants” podcast.
He flippantly said young boys “discover who they are” through such relationships, later implying that those relationships can be sexual in nature, and can “give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable rock where they can’t speak to their parents.”
A host with the popular podcast fired back at Yiannopoulos and said, “Sounds like Catholic priest molestation to me.”
“I’m grateful for Father Michael,” Yiannopoulos replied. “I wouldn’t give nearly such good head if it wasn’t for him.”
Yiannopoulos’ controversial remarks were by no means a recent revelation. His shocking comments on child sex abuse have been readily available on YouTube since the podcast shared the nearly three-hour-long interview on Jan. 4.
The same segment shows Yiannoupoulos discussing his hair style and Muslims.
The clips were brought to light again by a conservative blog known as the Reagan Battalion in an apparent attempt to oppose the Breitbart editor’s scheduled appearance at CPAC, which begins Wednesday in Oxon Hill, Md.
As the clips emerged Sunday night, Yiannopoulos drafted a lengthy Facebook post blaming his own “sloppy phrasing” and slamming the clips as a mere attempt to “discredit” him before “establishment Republicans.”
He denied supporting pedophilia and said he was not addressing “anything illegal” during the “Drunken Peasants” interview and he misspoke by using the word “boy.”
“I shouldn’t have used the word ‘boy’ when I talked about those relationships between older men and younger gay men,” Yiannopoulos wrote. “I was talking about my own relationship when I was 17 with a man who was 29. The age of consent in the UK is 16. That was a mistake.”
He also clarified that his example of learning oral sex from a priest was a joke to make light of his own sexual abuse.
“I did joke about giving better head as a result of clerical sexual abuse committed against me when I was a teen. If I choose to deal in an edgy way on an internet livestream with a crime I was the victim of that’s my prerogative,” he said. “It’s no different to gallows humor from AIDS sufferers.”
In a separate video shared by the Reagan Battalion, Yiannopoulos told podcaster Joe Rogan he witnessed potentially illegal sex with a minor at a Hollywood party and that he was a teen when a parish priest molested him.
“It was perfectly consensual. When I was the 14, I was the predator,” Yiannopoulos said, refusing to identity the clergy member during the September 2015 interview.
CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp said on Sunday evening that Yiannopoulos is not the keynote speaker, as previously reported, but is one of 75 speakers that include respected members of the GOP, such as Vice President Mike Pence and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Both are slated to speak at the Maryland conference.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper expressed shock that such a polarizing figure such as Yiannopoulos would be speaking at the right-wing convention in light of his remarks.
“How on earth can CPAC defend this,” Tapper asked.
“Friend of mine, conservative, could not be more distraught by this Milo tape. Was molested as a child. Horrified,” Tapper wrote of a friend.
Tapper then quoted the same friend as saying, “Milo straight up defended abusing 13 yr old boys … Please don’t let that be normalized.”
