Has Right-Wing Troll Milo’s ‘Lived Experience’ With ICE Awokened Him?: A Video Roundup

We are back in the video roundup swing of things with a new collection. First, senior editor Berny Belvedere breaks down the strange spectacle of Milo Yiannopoulos—a longtime champion of harsh deportation policies and treatment of immigrants—getting swept up by ICE and coming out the other side “very ashamed” he ever supported Donald Trump. Next, a clip from our Zooming In episode, recorded live at LibCon2026 and hosted by Liberalism.org’s Aaron Ross Powell, featuring The New York Times’s Jamelle Bouie and David French alongside Harvard’s Danielle Allen. In this clip, Bouie argues that Trumpism’s aura of invincibility depends on distance—and that it starts to crack the moment people encounter it up close. In our third clip, Thomas Shull talks with Andy Craig about what ISMA’s own survey data reveals: a real dropoff in support, even among some of Trump’s most committed voters, once policies that sounded good in theory started playing out in technicolor. For more videos from The UnPopulist, go here: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. Alt-right hall of famer Milo Yiannopoulos spent a decade demanding mass deportation of the cruelest kind, and mocking anyone who called for more humane treatment of immigrants. Last month, Milo was detained by ICE and deported within 24 hours. The experience shook him. He now says he’s “very ashamed” he ever supported Trump. At LibCon2026 this past July, The New York Times’s Jamelle Bouie made a sharp case for why Trumpism thrives on being seen from far away, as an abstraction rather than a lived reality. Once people actually run into it up close, he argues, the illusion doesn’t hold. The mystique doesn’t survive contact. Anecdotes and analogies, of course, can only take you so far. Here’s where ISMA’s latest survey helps illuminate the picture. As Thomas Shull, The UnPopulist‘s survey research director, explains, our data show real fractures forming in Trump’s base. Certainly, one loud defection doesn’t make a trend—but the numbers suggest Milo isn’t alone in his disgust. © The UnPopulist, 2026 Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X. We welcome your reactions and replies. Please adhere to our comments policy. Who cares? He's a nonentity. It would be deeply disappointing to see this jamoke get a chance, along with so many other former hate mongers and wingnuts, to rebrand himself as an anti-Trumper. I'm old enough to remember when Joe Walsh and John McCain occupied the dysregulated fringe of American politics. There's a tradition of such putrid personalities seamlessly rehabilitating their public images. Even Michael Cohen fooled pundits before proving once again what a low-life he really is.