Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos says he won't be attending Friday's White House daily press briefing, after telling a reporter earlier that he would be there.

"I won't be headed to the White House today as some news reports are suggesting -- en route to New York for cable news. Had fun at the press briefing last time but I'm the biggest story in the country and I'm focusing on TV! I'll drop Sean and Daddy a line about Berkeley privately," Yiannopoulos wrote on Facebook.

Yahoo News reporter Hunter Walker disputed Yiannopoulos's dismissal of "some news reports," noting on Twitter that Yiannopoulos directly said in an email that he would be at the briefing:

.@RebeccaShabad @daveweigel By "as some news reports are suggesting" does he mean to say "as I told reporters I would be?" pic.twitter.com/Kaoh7UdDvJ — Hunter Walker (@hunterw) February 3, 2017

Before his Facebook post announcing he wouldn't attend the briefing, Yiannopoulos said it wasn't hard to get credentials.

"I'm a senior editor at America's most influential news outlet. How the f--- do you think?" Yiannopoulos told the New York Daily News in a Thursday email.



Yiannopoulos also said at the time he didn’t know if he will be called upon by White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

The 32-year-old Yiannopoulos attended another briefing in March, asking then-White House press secretary Josh Earnest if Facebook and Twitter are “punishing conservative and libertarian points of view" after he was banned from Twitter.



ADVERTISEMENT

If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017

Yiannopoulos's ban came after years of complaints that he used his account to egg on his hundreds of thousands of followers to harass opponents.Friday's briefing comes two days after a speech Yiannopoulos was set to deliver at the University of California, Berkeley was canceled due to violent protests that broke out before the event.President Trump responded to the situation at Berkeley with a Thursday tweet morning that threatened to pull federal funds from the university.

More staunchly conservative publications have attended the White House press briefings since Trump took office.



The popular Gateway Pundit blog stated it will be sending a reporter, while far-right Infowars, led by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, says Jerome Corsi will be their White House correspondent.

- Updated at 12:35 p.m.