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Lucian Wintrich, speaking on "It's OK to Be White," was arrested after leaving the stage and grabbing a woman in the crowd.
Lucian Wintrich, a gay conservative who writes for the far-right website Gateway Pundit, was arrested Tuesday during an appearance at the University of Connecticut after grabbing a woman.
Wintrich, who is the site's White House correspondent, was giving a speech titled "It's OK to Be White," the Hartford Courant reports. Members of the audience repeatedly interrupted him with chants of "Go home, Nazi" and "Black lives matter."
"At one point, Wintrich left his place at the podium in Andre Schenker Lecture Hall, rushed up the steps of the auditorium and grabbed a woman," the Courant reports. "The crowd reacted quickly, swelling with pushes and shoves down the steps until police led Wintrich out into the hallway and then into a restroom." There was another physical altercation involving a man who had been filming the event, but he was not arrested, UConn spokeswoman Stephanie Reitz told the newspaper.
"I can confirm that the speaker has been arrested and he is in police custody," Reitz said. "There are no other arrests and no injuries." Wintrich was arrested by university police and will be charged Tuesday night, she added.
Wintrich's appearance was sponsored by the UConn College Republicans, which touted the event as an "opportunity to meet someone on the front lines of the media versus Trump battle" and said Wintrich would discuss "identity politics, liberal victimhood, anti-conservative bias and other hot-button issues."
The event drew much opposition on the campus, with some opponents saying it would attract white supremacists. The Republican group said some of its flyers advertising the speech were taken down. The sponsors of a scheduled talk by Wintrich at the University of Massachusetts-Boston recently postponed their event.
Wintrich (pictured at right with Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft) appeared to have little journalistic experience before joining Gateway Pundit in February, according to Media Matters. He was previously best known for organizing a "Twinks4Trump" photo exhibit that had its first showing at last year's Republican convention.
Media Matters has shared many Wintrich tweets in which he disparages women, transgender people, and other gay people, such as CNN journalist Anderson Cooper. During one of the presidential debates last year, he tweeted, "One more of these asinine #debate questions, and Donald Trump needs to grab Anderson Cooper by the pussy." Other tweets: "Can we just register 'conservative' as a 'gender identity'' so libs get too confused to keep trying to argue with us?" and "Rather than 'manspreading' on the subway, can we examine 'fatwomanspreading'? cuz rn I'm between two broads who made that their occupation."
