- Marjorie Taylor Greene has hired "ex-gay" alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos as an intern.
- He lost much of his following in 2017 after making favorable comments about sexual relations between boys and older men.
- Now, he's been hired by a congresswoman who's accused pro-LGBTQ Democrats of being "groomers."
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has hired Milo Yiannopoulos, a 37-year-old former Breitbart editor and "alt-right" activist, as an intern in her official Washington, DC office.
"Mummy always said I'd end up in government!" Yiannopoulos wrote on his Telegram account on Monday.
Greene confirmed the hiring to Insider in a defensive statement that included a transphobic remark about Democratic Rep. Marie Newman of Illinois' trans daughter.
"So I have an intern that was raped by a priest as a young teen, was gay, has offended everyone at some point, turned his life back to Jesus and Church, and changed his life," she said. "Great story!"
"I've finally been persuaded out of retirement. But my skills are a bit rusty, so the best role I could land was an unpaid internship with a friend," Yiannopoulos also wrote on Telegram. "Pray for me!"
The hiring, first reported by Right Wing Watch, marks something of a career change for the one-time online provocateur, who saw his following crater after controversial comments about sexual relationships between younger and older men surfaced in 2017.
"I think particularly in the gay world, and outside the Catholic Church — if that's where some of you want to go with this — I think in the gay world some of the most important, enriching and incredibly life-affirming, important shaping relationships very often between younger boys and older men," he said in a 2016 podcast. "They can be hugely positive experiences."
Those comments and others surfaced by the conservative "Reagan Battalion" Twitter account led to Yiannopoulos being disinvited from the Conservative Political Action Conference that year for "condoning pedophilia."
—Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) February 20, 2017
He also lost a book deal and resigned from Breitbart shortly thereafter. He had been hired at Breitbart by then-executive chairman Steve Bannon in 2014.
Yiannopoulos, who identified at the time as gay, now calls himself "ex-gay" and claimed last year to be building a conversion therapy clinic in Florida.
"I treat it like an addiction," Yiannopoulos told LifeSiteNews of his prior sexuality. "You never stop being an alcoholic."
He also said his husband — who he described merely as "the guy I live with" — had "been demoted to housemate."
Yiannopoulos has also made a slew of other provocative comments, including describing both Islam and feminism as "cancers."
Last year, he joined the right-wing Catholic website Church Militant as a regular contributor, where his biography page describes him as a "reformed sodomite."
It is unclear exactly when Yiannopoulos was hired as an intern for the far-right congresswoman, though he was present at her April 28 press conference in which she discussed Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, a bill to reform Section 230, and called for the reinstatement of her Twitter account.
The staff ID posted on his Telegram indicates that his internship will last until August 5.
Greene, for her part, has frequently accused Democrats and others favorable to LGBTQ rights as being "groomers."
—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) June 6, 2022
She's also currently one of two members of Congress — the other being Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona — to have been stripped of her committee assignments for her own past controversies.
More recently, she's faced criticism even from her own party for speaking at a white nationalist conference in Florida.