Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos recently told at least two news outlets that he wanted vigilantes to start shooting journalists, but he insisted Thursday that he did so to taunt reporters.
"I can't wait for vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight," the author and agitator told a reporter for the New York Observer over a text message. The news outlet, which wrote about the incident this week, was working on a feature story about a New York City restaurant that Yiannopoulos reportedly frequents.
Yiannopoulos, when asked to elaborate, told the reporter this was his "standard response," according to the Observer.
Yiannopoulos also also sent a similar message to Will Sommer, a Daily Beast reporter.
After a shooting in an Annapolis newsroom on Thursday, Yiannopoulos, 33, confirmed in an Instagram post that he wrote the messages, but that he sent them to the reporters as a way to troll them.
"You're about to see a raft of news stories claiming that I am responsible for inspiring the deaths of journalists," he wrote. "The truth, as always, is the opposite of what the media tells you."
He continued: "I sent a troll about 'vigilante death squads as a private response to a few hostile journalists who were asking me for comment, basically as a way of saying, 'F--- off.' They then published it."
Yiannopoulos put the blame on the journalists who wrote about his remarks.
"If there turns out to be any dimension to this crime related to my private, misreported remarks, the responsibility for that lies wholly with the Beast and the Observer for drumming up fake hysteria about a private joke, and with the verified liberals who pretended they thought I was serious," he wrote.
Yiannopoulos once worked for Breitbart News, but resigned last year after podcasts surfaced in which he seemed to condone sex between men and boys. He has since said he does not condone pedophilia.
