Meet Milo Junior: Lucian Wintrich

• By: Joe Simonson
• March 13, 2017, 10:18 pm

If you thought the fall of Milo Yiannopoulos meant an end to flamboyant, gay, conservative provocateurs—you were wrong.

Enter Lucian Wintrich, chief White House correspondent for right-wing blog the Gateway Pundit. Wintrich insists he’s not patterning himself after Milo—he just happens to dress and talk like him. Just like Milo, Wintrich favors tailored suits and bright colors, and talks about Islam being incompatible with Western Civilization. Wintrich says both he and Milo serve as a “gateway drug” to conservatism because they make it more fun and entertaining.

Milo enjoys kicking up shitstorms—and so apparently does mini Milo. Just before the White House press briefing last Friday, he got into an apparent scuffle with Fox correspondent Jon Decker. BuzzFeed White House correspondent Adrian Carrasquillo tweeted that Decker “loudly told everyone in briefing room that Gateway Pundit is here” and that the website hates “blacks, Jews, Hispanics.”

Sometime after that, Wintrich alleges Decker grabbed his arm and called him a Nazi. Decker and Fox News deny these allegations, and I can’t find anyone else supporting Wintrich’s story (After publication, Andrew Feinberg, White House correspondent for the Kremlin-backed Sputnik News, reached out to me that he saw Decker “touch or grasp” Lucian’s arm, but “wasn’t sure how hard.”).

Quite the entrance.

I called 28-year-old Wintrich a week ago after hearing he was going to be a member of the White House Press Corps (an “incredible job” that “people would kill for,” he says. ) With Milo’s resignation from Breitbart, the conservative movement needs another gay man using his heritage and sexual orientation as cover for any outlandish statement he makes. (Like Milo, Wintrich is part Jewish)

Here’s what you need to know about Wintrich:

• For starters, his birth name isn’t Wintrich—he claims he legally changed it sometime in the last seven years.  He says he grew up in “inner-city Pittsburgh,” but claims he comes from money and “European intelligentsia” and “aristocracy.”
• He went to Bard College, and that’s where he says he turned from a liberal to a Trump-loving conservative.
• Wintrich’s boyfriend is Colombian, but he says that won’t stop him from Making America Great Again.
• He used to host the podcast “Acorns & Merlot” back in high school, which he says was one of the most downloaded shows in 2007.  (For what it’s worth, I can’t find any data supporting this assertion.)
• Yes, he’s friends with Chuck Johnson.
• He claims he’s not ripping off Milo, but does sometimes get called “Corporate Milo,” because he says he’s more serious about conservatism.
• Somehow being serious about conservatism meant becoming a diehard Trump supporter, whose policies he sees as “a bridge to an older libertarian Republican Party” and “true conservatism.”
• His ideal presidential candidate is Barry Goldwater, who is somehow consistent with his hopes of a “more modern Republican Party.”
• He says he’s not racist because he’s dating a minority.

Again, Wintrich promises he’s not ripping off Milo:

Really

Seriously

Godspeed, Lucian