Milo Yiannopoulos, a provocative conservative commentator who rose to fame in the 2010s, said he was “ashamed” to have supported President Donald Trump following his recent arrest and deportation.
Yiannopoulos told Piers Morgan in an interview that aired Tuesday that he never anticipated that his support for Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign would end with his removal from the United States. Yiannopoulos is a citizen of the United Kingdom and is barred from voting in U.S. elections but was an avid Trump supporter a decade ago.
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“To think that the promise and hope and joy and the anticipation of Trump 2016 could, sort of, over the course of 10 years, collapse into this ugly, warmongering, whole mentally ill heap of crazy, with some of the most unstable and lunatic people seemingly directing the president’s actions,” Yiannopoulos said. “If I had any clue that anything remotely like this was even possible, I would never have got involved in supporting Trump in the first place, and I’m very ashamed that I did.”
Internet provocateur Laura Loomer, a Trump confidante, reported Yiannopoulos to the administration, he claimed.
“She’s fallen into this kind of symbiotic, sort of toxic relationship with Trump where he can’t get enough of her obsequious toadying praise and she can’t get enough of the clout from the proximity,” Yiannopoulos said. “I think he allows her to run riot because he likes anybody who praises him, especially, I guess, these days, because they’re pretty few and far between.”
Federal immigration authorities arrested Yiannopoulos at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana, on Thursday, according to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson.
Yiannopoulos told Morgan that 15 federal immigration officers stormed in to take him into custody then made calls back to Washington every 20 minutes with updates on his arrest.
“They put … your hands, your feet chained together,” Yiannopoulos said. “I mean, like everybody is arrested is like an MS-15 gang member. It hurts a lot more than it looks like. It was humiliating. It was disorientating. The rest of it, it was physically degrading. It was, it was frightening. It was frightening. I don’t think I’ve ever been frightened like before.”
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Yiannopoulous entered the U.S. on May 14, 2019, on a visa. He failed to depart the U.S. when his visa expired, according to the DHS, making him an illegal immigrant.
The 41-year-old British man claimed that he had a valid conditional green card, that he is married to a U.S. citizen, and that he would not have intentionally overstayed his visa.
