Mike Cernovich Claims Unite The Right Rally Was a ‘Federal Trap’

As part of his ongoing campaign to sanitize his prior ties to the white supremacist Alt-Right movement, online personality Mike Cernovich claimed that the white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville last weekend was an obvious “federal trap” designed to help the government catalog people who identify with white supremacists, and warned that associating with the Alt-Right would prevent his younger male viewers from being able to have sex with women.

During a Periscope livestream posted today, Cernovich insinuated to viewers that the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a young white nationalist plowed his vehicle into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing one, was a set-up by the federal government, including the torchlight rally organized the night before the main event.

“I can’t believe people didn’t know that was a honey pot,” Cernovich told his viewers. “Those torches—why do they want you to carry torches? So they can see your face and take your picture … Every one of you that was at that torch rally—you dumbasses lit your faces up for the Feds. You idiots. The Feds got every one of you.”

Cernovich continued his effort to distance himself from his Alt-Right history by warning his younger audience members to stay away from groups that openly identify as part of the Alt-Right because it will “ruin your lives” and “you’re not even going to be able to get laid.”

“Me, fortunately, I’ve been very successful in life and because of that I can afford the drama,” Cernovich said.

“If you are a 22-year-old kid and you don’t have a trust fund,” he continued, “you’re screwed man. I don’t know what to tell you. If you’re not independently wealthy and somebody Googles your name and you have some kind of involvement with this, it’s over dude. It’s over. Your life’s over.”

Cernovich’s latest pushback against the Alt-Right movement that helped him build his status as a media icon follows his criticism of the movement’s self-declared leader Richard Spencer, despite having once declared in a since-deleted tweet that he became “Alt-Right” after realizing “tolerance only went one way and diversity is code for white genocide.”