UPDATED with Trump response President Donald Trump has tweeted his condemnation of the protests, appearing to threaten the university’s federal funding. No indication that this is an actual policy proposal rather than just an angry tweet.
PREVIOUS Wednesday A speech by Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos was canceled tonight at the University of California at Berkeley as protesters smashed windows, tossed smoke bombs and set a gas-fueled generator alight.
The raucous protest on the campus’ Sproul Plaza was captured live on CNN tonight, with correspondent Kyung Lah seemingly shaken at times by the loud booms. Neither MSNBC nor Fox News immediately cut to live location coverage.
Yiannopoulos’ speech was set to begin at 7 pm. Protesters, many dressed in black, had already gathered outside the campus student union, chanting, setting off fireworks, breaking building windows and eventually tearing down metal barriers.
After campus police announced that the speech had been canceled, Yiannopoulos posted a Facebook message saying, “I have been evacuated from the IJC Berkeley campus after violent left-wing protesters tore down barricades, lit fires, threw rocks and Roman candles at the windows and breached the ground floor of the building,” Yiannopoulos posted on his verified Facebook account. In a video on his Facebook timeline, he derided the “hard left” as being “so utterly antithetical to free speech,” even from “someone as silly and harmless and gay as me.”
The openly gay Yiannopoulos’ right-wing provocations have included remarks widely interpreted as anti-gay, as well as anti-Muslim and anti-feminist.
