Editor’s Note: @KurtBardella is the publisher of MorningHangover.com and has served as the spokesperson for Breitbart News, the Daily Caller, then House Oversight and Government Reform Committee & Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-California). The views expressed in this commentary are solely his.
Story highlights
Kurt Bardella: Jeff Sessions was once Breitbart's hero, but now they won't go to war to defend him
Breitbart instead blames "fake news media," who they claim fuel the Trump-Sessions infighting, says Bardella
For years, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been cast by Breitbart News (and one of its most visible writers, Matt Boyle) as a conservative hero.
When then-Sen. Sessions attacked Jeb Bush at CPAC in 2015, Breitbart and Boyle framed it as a “battle for the soul of the GOP.”
When Sessions endorsed Donald Trump in February 2016, Breitbart and Boyle wrote that Sessions was “the intellectual leader of the future of the conservative movement.”
At the time, Breitbart and Boyle reported, “Sessions is the most highly sought-after endorsement because of his respect party-wide” and that previous endorsements Donald Trump had received “pale in comparison.”
You would think that given all that Jeff Sessions has meant to Breitbart and Boyle, they would be on the front line of the effort to disembowel anyone who would attack their hero the way that Donald Trump has recently, on Twitter and in the press.
Lately, some conservative media figures, such as Matt Drudge, have reportedly been irritated by Donald Trump’s behavior and ineffectiveness. And while Matt Boyle did publish a story on Tuesday with a headline describing Sessions as “A Man Who Embodies the Movement that Elected Donald Trump President,” that same story framed the “tension” between Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions as the result of “constant griping from the opposition party media pushing for that next soundbite” for Sessions to resign and “keep the story alive.”
I must have missed the breaking news that the “opposition party media” had successfully hijacked President Trump’s Twitter account and posted all kinds of disparaging comments about his own attorney general.
A lot of attention in media circles was given to another Breitbart story that appeared earlier on Tuesday with the headline “Trump’s attack on Sessions over Clinton Prosecution Highlights His Own ‘Weak’ Stance.”
Media reporters have speculated on whether this meant there was a Breitbart vs. Trump war brewing.
I’m not going to pretend to tell you what is really in the hearts and minds of those who work at Breitbart.
But I will tell you, based on my own firsthand experience working with Breitbart for three years, what full-tilt combat with Breitbart looks like. It doesn’t look like this.
Substitute Donald Trump with any other political figure, and I guarantee you these relentless, one-s