Sen. John Cornyn's campaign communications director has a documented record of calling for Breitbart News to be driven out of the conservative movement, pressured by advertisers, and ignored entirely.
This isn't a leaked opposition research file. These are his own words, posted publicly, over the span of years.
With Cornyn facing a Republican primary runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on May 26, the hiring of Matt Mackowiak is drawing scrutiny. The timing matters. So does the paper trail.
In 2016, Mackowiak posted a call that read like a mobilization order against one of the right's most-read outlets:
"It's time to defrock Breitbart from the conservative movement. Treat them like Infowars. Pressure their advertisers. Ignore them."
That same year, he targeted Breitbart's now-Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle directly, writing that Boyle "is a total disgrace and if Breitbart News has a shred of dignity & ethics it will fire him immediately." The language wasn't a passing frustration. It was a firing demand.
The posts didn't stop in 2016. In 2018, Mackowiak said that "promoting anything on Breitbart is one example" of grounds for ending a professional relationship. In 2019, he made his position plain: "I hate Breitbart." By March 2020, he was saying he hadn't "taken Breitbart seriously in ten years."
That's four separate years. Four separate statements. A consistent posture, not a momentary lapse.
Breitbart contacted Mackowiak for comment. He did not respond by the time of publication.
The 2016 call to "pressure their advertisers" wasn't just venting. It mirrored the precise tactics used by Sleeping Giants, a leftist group that organized social media campaigns to pressure companies into pulling ads from conservative media. By 2017, thousands of companies had capitulated to that kind of pressure. Mackowiak was urging the same playbook, not against a liberal outlet, but against a conservative one.
That's the tell. When a self-described conservative's instinct, when confronted with a media outlet he dislikes, is to go after its advertisers and demand it be purged from the movement, he's borrowing from the left's toolkit. The left silences through financial strangulation. Mackowiak was calling for exactly that.
Breitbart asked Cornyn's campaign whether the senator agrees with Mackowiak's statements and whether he knew about them before bringing him on. Neither question has been answered.
Those are reasonable questions. Cornyn is a four-term senator gearing up for a runoff and reportedly seeking President Trump's endorsement. His campaign's public face has a documented history of calling for one of the most-read conservative news platforms to be financially strangled and expelled from the movement.
Voters are entitled to know whether Cornyn shares that view or simply didn't vet his own hire.
Texas AG Ken Paxton has been direct about his read of Cornyn's record. Speaking to Boyle on Breitbart News Saturday, Paxton made a pointed argument about the gap between Cornyn's public posture and his behind-the-scenes conduct:
"He has talked a big game about loving Donald Trump. But, as you said, if you look at what he's actually done — supporting the people that tried to destroy Donald Trump, and even during the election coming out saying that Donald Trump's day is over — everything that John Cornyn did was designed to make sure that Donald Trump did not get reelected."
Paxton didn't stop there. He went further, arguing that Cornyn's conduct, if fully known to Texas voters, would be disqualifying:
"If the people of Texas knew how viciously John Cornyn went after Donald Trump by encouraging and inciting these people like Jack Smith and Mueller and [Monaco] to basically destroy the president, there's no way that the people of Texas would put up with that and vote for John Cornyn."
Paxton framed Cornyn's approach as characteristically indirect: "This is the way John Cornyn works. He works behind the scenes usually, but that stuff is out in public, and we have the information. We just need to let the voters know."
President Trump has said he will not endorse in the race until the Senate passes the SAVE America Act, a voter ID bill currently stalled because of the 60-vote threshold required by the filibuster. Paxton has said he would consider stepping aside if the Senate lifts the filibuster to pass the bill. Trump has also said he expects whoever he does not endorse to drop out of the race.
That dynamic puts both candidates in a holding pattern, and it puts Cornyn in a particularly complicated position. A senator seeking the president's blessing while his campaign's communications director has a public record of trying to destroy one of the president's most supportive media outlets is not an easy posture to maintain.
Mackowiak's statements span more than four years and cover the full range, from tactical advertiser pressure to personal contempt. They weren't hot takes that aged poorly. They were a sustained effort to marginalize a conservative institution.
The question for Texas Republican primary voters is straightforward: if a campaign's top communicator spent years trying to silence and defund conservative media using the same tactics deployed by the left, what does that tell you about who's actually running the messaging operation?
Cornyn hasn't answered that. His communications director hasn't answered it either.
The ballot is May 26.