Milo Yiannopoulos Resigns From Breitbart Amid Pedophilia Comments

Milo Yiannopoulos has resigned from Breitbart amid pedophilia scandal.

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The unbelievable fallout from the disturbing video of Milo Yiannopoulos defending pedophilia continued Tuesday, when the alt-right provocateur resigned from Breitbart News, where he was a senior editor and in many ways, the face of the organization.

“Breitbart News has stood by me when others caved,” Yiannopoulos said in a 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. This decision is mine alone."

The announcement is just the latest shoe to drop since the video, in which Yiannopoulos attempts to justify relationships between older men and teenage boys, resurfaced. On Monday, Yiannopoulos was dropped as a speaker at the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference, and his book deal with Simon & Schuster was also nixed. Both entities came under fire for giving a platform to a man who’s regularly accused of using racist and xenophobic rhetoric in both his writing and his public appearances.

On Monday, The Hill reported that multiple Breitbart employees were prepared to resign if Yiannopoulos wasn’t immediately fired. It would appear that his stepping down is directly related to the mass exodus that would have occurred had Yiannoupolos continued to work for the alt-right media company, though he seemed to harbor no ill will towards Breitbart in his statement.

“They have allowed me to carry conservative and libertarian ideas to communities that would otherwise never have heard them,” he said of the company. “They have been a significant factor in my success. I’m grateful for that freedom and for the friendships I forged there.”

In what has become a concerted effort to contain the fallout from the video and the condemnations coming from both sides of the aisle, Yiannopolous held a press conference in New York City Tuesday, where he revealed plans to launch his own media company in the coming weeks. “I look forward to making you laugh, cry, and think for decades to come," he told the assembled press.

Yiannopolous also said that he still intends to release his book Dangerous under a different publisher, and that proceeds will go to child abuse charities. He also directly addressed the video, saying that the message he was trying to send was that pedophilia “doesn't have to affect your life, doesn't have to define the rest of your life,” echoing an earlier Facebook post in which he also tried to explain the video.

“I am a gay man, and a child abuse victim,” he wrote. "I would like to restate my utter disgust at adults who sexually abuse minors. I am horrified by pedophilia and I have devoted large portions of my career as a journalist to exposing child abusers.”

Twitter continued to condemn and criticize Yiannopolous:

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