A senior staff member of Senator John Cornyn’s campaign for re-election in Texas has 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 joined the boycott campaign and stopped advertising on Breitbart News. By May 2017, that number stretched into the thousands.
Mackowiak’s criticism of conservative media extended beyond Breitbart. The longtime Trump hater and George Floyd fan stated in 2018 that “Promoting anything on Breitbart is one example [for ending a relationship.” He declared in 2019—three years after Donald Trump’s victory—that “I hate Breitbart.”
By March 2020, Mackowiak said: “I haven’t taken Breitbart seriously in ten years.” He referred to the website as “beneath contempt.” Additionally, Mackowiak targeted Breitbart News’ political editor, Matt Boyle, a longtime ally of President Trump and the MAGA movement. He demanded: “Matt Boyle is a total disgrace and if Breitbart News has a shred of dignity and ethics it will fire him immediately.”
Despite these calls, Boyle was not fired, neither immediately nor since.
