Kanye West Rehires Far-Right ‘Troll’ Milo Yiannopoulos in Run-Up to Presidential Bid
Kanye West has rehired noxious right-wing troll Milo Yiannopoulos to help him with his 2024 presidential bid. In turn, Yiannopoulos has fired white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and political adviser Ali Alexander in an email, Rolling Stone confirmed Thursday.
“As you may know, I have been in Los Angeles for the past week with Ye, discussing his presidential aspirations,” Yiannopoulos wrote in an email to Fuentes posted on gossip site TMZ. “The result of those discussions is that I will be taking the reins once again as director of his political operations. Your services on Ye’s exploratory team are terminated as of this letter.” The signature below his name in the email reads “YE24.”
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Yiannopoulos’ meteoric rise from fringe figure to mainstream political operative has been marked with undiluted racism, violent calls for journalists to be shot, and antisemitic conspiracy-mongering. In 2017, Yiannopoulos was accused of advocating pedophilia in several video clips, resulting in his resignation as editor at Breitbart and the loss of a book deal to publish his autobiography. The following year, he was suspected of pocketing scholarship funds he had raised for “white men who wish to pursue their post-secondary education.” And before rejoining Kanye’s camp, the alt-right commentator previously was an intern for 2020 election truther and Jan. 6 defender Congresswoman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Yiannopoulos declined to comment for this article, but confirmed to Rolling Stone the veracity of the emails and that he is rejoining Ye’s campaign. A rep for Ye did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
West fired Yiannopoulos in December after claiming that he had set up a meeting West had with Donald Trump and Fuentes. “I wanted to show Trump the kind of talent that he’s missing out on by allowing his terrible handlers to dictate who he can and can’t hang out with,” Yiannopoulos told NBC News at the time. “I also wanted to send a message to Trump that he has systematically repeatedly neglected, ignored, abused the people who love him the most, the people who put him in office, and that kind of behavior comes back to bite you in the end.” Trump took the meeting as an act of sabotage on his own presidential campaign, insider sources told NBC News, likely leading to Yiannopoulos’ dismissal.
Yiannopoulos was also on West’s staff when the rapper appeared on Alex Jones’ Infowars to defend Nazis and proclaim an affinity for Adolf Hitler.
The Anti-Defamation League has described Yiannopoulos as a “misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, transphobic troll.”
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