I blame myself for this whole debacle.
Back in 2014, Milo Yiannopoulos, a scrawny and scarcely-read tech blogger, reached out and begged me for a job, right as we were starting up Breitbart London. I made the mistake of giving him a chance. That’s where his entire life on the right began.
His “Kernel Mag” (a tech gossip blog in East London) had just gone tits up, but he had a flair for the acerbic and for noticing.
Also, I was desperate for columnists.
So I called Bannon, explained the situation, and made the introduction. Out of the goodness of my heart, and in under 50 words, I kickstarted one of the most regrettable careers in media and politics.
He started off okay, as is everyone’s experience with him, but by June he was making contract demands and by July he was bemoaning the fact that we weren’t paying him $50,000 for his columns, and took umbrage when I said we wouldn’t turn Breitbart London into “the Milo show.”
Within weeks of this, he was emailing Breitbart’s U.S. bosses demanding MY job, claiming he could do it better. He was rebuffed. I recall an email he got from Bannon calling him “margenalia,” and saying he wishes he could edit like me. Bannon forwarded it on to me for a chuckle. He can be cruel like that. I enjoyed the banter.
Through this entire period, I was trying to keep a ridiculous number of plates spinning, as someone who had never managed an operation like this, at 28-years-old, with an entire reporting staff under me, as well as characters like James Delingpole and now Milo. Add to that I was heavily involved in the ascendant UK Independence Party (UKIP), the precursor to Reform UK. More than anything, though, I had Bannon and the U.S. bosses breathing down my neck every day. It’s a wonder I never turned to hard drugs.
Milo, as is his nature, went on to insert himself in every room and relationship in the company until he finally got what he wanted: his own staff and his own “Tech” vertical on the site. As a senior editor, however, I could see what this was really all about. He wasn’t writing his own columns. He had staff draft them and leave “[INSERT MILOISM]” prompts for him to come in and top and tail the articles.
I could see it all live in the site’s back end.
There were so many points of conflict in the organization that when Nigel Farage offered me the job as his senior political advisor, I jumped at the chance, and left Breitbart London in the incapable hands of James and Milo.
When I returned, after the 2015 UK election, at Bannon’s insistence (“The site is TERRIBLE with you!”), the ousted editors threw a hissy fit. I privately thanked God I would never have to work with them again.
Milo focused on his tech vertical, pissing money up the wall from the likes of Rebekah Mercer and others, who shelled out MILLIONS to tour him around the U.S. as some kind of conservative firebrand, which I knew he wasn’t.
The inside accounting of what went on inside his liveried tour bus, replete with his 10-foot-face and cartoon of him on a throne doesn’t bear repeating. Not least because of non-disclosure agreements.
Throughout all this, I felt so ashamed of everything to do with him that when the story about his excuses for priestly pederasty finally got aired in 2017, I was the first to tell the company bosses: he has to go.
And so he went, and I hoped that would be the last of him. But once again, he minced into the arms of the unsuspecting: first Laura Loomer, then Marjorie Taylor Greene, and finally, Kanye West.
He even showed up at a Tommy Robinson rally in London, in 2018, acting all sweet. Again, I thought, “Well, maybe there’s some merit to him, yet.”
Another. Awful. Decision.
Some time last year, for reasons unbeknownst to me, he began tweeting about me again, making all kinds of lurid and false accusations, just months after he had dined at my DC restaurant Butterworth’s, and lauded its beauty on his X account.
Apparently, this time, I was a rapist. I read these cries for attention from the speakeasy of The Kennedy Center, as I entertained three young women who looked, barely concerned, on as I rage-tweeted back.
But as he was needlessly abusing me again, his own fate was being sealed.
A friend close to the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) reached out and let me know: “Milo has been living in the US illegally.”
I was shocked, though I suppose I ought not to have been. A source close to the State Department confirmed it when I enquired, and so began his deportation saga.
For those who haven’t followed along: it appears that not only was he publicly lying about his immigration status in the United States, but that he even missed court proceedings on the matter.
Finally, I got word last month that he was about to be deported. On Thursday night, I got a call. As overly dramatic as it may seem.
“We got him. In Louisiana.”
And yet, of course, he’s certain to resurface in Britain shortly. Perhaps as an advisor to Rupert Lowe, or perhaps as a contestant on some third-tier reality TV show.
To America, I say my apologies. For all of it. And to Britain, in advance of his return… my apologies. For all of it.
Apology accepted. We gave ya'll Mehgan Markle. Let's call it even. Keep up the great work!
One of the very rare Raheem L’s. But being guilty of giving someone a chance is understandable.