Hedge-fund billionaire Bob Mercer, a major Republican donor who supported Donald Trump, announced Thursday that he would be selling his stake in Breitbart News to his daughters; pulling his funding from Milo Inc., the controversial entertainment venture run by Milo Yiannopoulos; and relinquishing his co-C.E.O. title at Renaissance Technologies, where he oversaw more than $50 billion in assets, to take a non-management role.

In an open letter to investors, the 71-year-old strongly denounced the white nationalist movement that has come to be associated with several of his far-right political causes, tainting his reputation and putting Renaissance Technologies in the crosshairs of a divestment campaign. “Of the many mischaracterizations made of me by the press, the most repugnant to me, have been the intimations that I am a white supremacist or a member of some other noxious group,” he wrote. On the contrary, he said, “a society founded on the basis of the individual freedom that flourishes under a limited federal government has no place for discrimination . . . Discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, creed, or anything of that sort is abhorrent to me. But more than that, it is ignorant.”

Mercer also sought to distance himself from Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser who issued his own half-hearted rebuke of Yiannopoulos last month in an attempt to shake off his reputation as a white-nationalist sympathizer. While Mercer said he respected Bannon, he clarified that, “I make my own decisions with respect to whom I support politically. Those decisions do not always align with Mr. Bannon’s.”

But he saved his most scathing condemnation for Yiannopoulos, whose already-sordid reputation took a major hit after a BuzzFeed News report revealed his ties to neo-Nazis. “[I]n my opinion, actions of and statements by Mr. Yiannopoulos have caused pain and divisiveness undermining the open and productive discourse that I had hoped to facilitate. I was mistaken to have supported him, and for several weeks have been in the process of severing all ties with him.” (In a statement to the Hive, Yiannopoulos said he was “grateful for Bob’s help in getting me this far in my career, [and] wish him and the family all the best.”)

Several sources in Mercer’s orbit told me they were shocked that it had taken this long for the billionaire to pull the plug. Previously, people close to Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah, believed that the duo were prepared to stand by Yiannopoulos despite the controversy. But the strength of Bob Mercer’s statement took them by surprise. “Holy shit,” one of Yiannopoulos’s former colleagues texted me, adding that although Rebekah has remained silent, “I think it means Milo is officially de-funded.” (The Mercers did not respond to a request for comment.)

While Mercer‘s denunciation of Yiannopoulos left no room for ambiguity, his efforts to distance himself from Bannon were comparatively tempered, leaving open the question of whether the Mercers will continue their association with the populist-nationalist movement. Former Breitbart employees familiar with the Mercers’ strategies pointed out that while Bob had publicly distanced himself from Renaissance, he had not divested, and still maintains a sizable fortune. “This seems to me much more like Robert Mercer separating . . . his image from his money-making capacity than an actual disassociation with the people he funded for so long,” said Ben Shapiro, the former editor-at-large at Breitbart who broke with the site in 2016. “The only person who’s really damaged here is Yiannopoulos. Rebekah’s gonna continue funding Breitbart, [and] there’s no repentance or shift here . . . it’s just a P.R. maneuver to [take] pressure off his hedge-fund investors.”