Andrew Breitbart understood that the left’s mission was to “destroy regular people and keep the elites that were currently controlling things” in power, and it is up to patriotic Americans to continue the “righteous mission,” Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle said during a one-on-one appearance on the America First with Sebastian Gorka podcast.
Boyle, who leads the political coverage at Breitbart News, offered background on his journalistic life — from how he started his journey to where he is now.
“I kind of bounced around the country when I was in high school, in college. My dad worked for supermarket chains up in the northeast and Boston. That’s where I grew up,” he said, explaining that he started college at Boise State and wrote for the Boise State school newspaper.
He said he was not overtly political at the time and just picked journalism as a major and happened to like it. After three semesters, he moved to Minnesota and did a semester at a community college there before ultimately finishing his undergraduate degree at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, where he worked as editor of the school paper.
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However, Boyle said he was not very political until after he graduated in 2010, around the time of the Tea Party movement. At the time, he was planning to go to D.C. for a master’s degree program for journalism at American University, explaining he was calling every publication to try to get freelance work. The only place that called him back was the Daily Caller, run by none other than Tucker Carlson.
“His team gave me a chance. I ended up working for them. And lo and behold, they actually paid me to write stories, which was really cool. So I went out and covered. The first story I wrote for Daily Caller was, I covered a Tea Party rally in St. Augustine, Florida, right down the street from my college. And then I started covering all sorts of different things for them,” Boyle said, explaining that he began questioning the rest of the media throughout these experiences, detailing a hostile environment at American University as well.
“They [American University] were pushing a leftist viewpoint and, in classes and in assignments, one of the assignments was America is Islamophobic. Explain why, and I said, ‘You’re wrong.’ And then I started ripping them apart and I did all sorts of different things,” he said describing the fights he had with professors before ultimately leaving American University and going full time at the Daily Caller, where he covered a range of stories — perhaps most famously, the Operation Fast and Furious scandal.
Covering the Tea Party movements also helped open his eyes, as Boyle said he saw “regular people who are standing up and fighting back against a tyrannical government.”
“And I think that I really much identified with those people who were wrongly being accused of being racist or being antisemitic or whatever,” he explained.
He detailed the first time he reached out to Andrew Breitbart for a story, as Soros-funded groups were, at the time, going to Tea Party rallies and asking people “these really, in depth, complex, historical, or policy questions.”
“And then they would selectively edit together the videos to make them look bad, to make the Tea Partiers look bad instead of, you know, accurately representing [that] these are people concerned about their government,” Boyle told Gorka.
Boyle explained that Carlson told him to reach out to Andrew Breitbart for comment, and he sent a comment request. Andrew Breitbart responded with his phone number.
“It was surreal,” he said. “We hit it off from this, from the get-go, because both of us understood inherently what the other side was doing. We understood that they were weaponizing information, whether that be videos, whether that be communications, anything they could get their hands on, to try to destroy regular people and keep the elites that were currently controlling things — by the way in both parties, right?”
“Andrew understood that this was a war,” he continued. “He’s famous for hashtag war, right? He understood that this was an information war. This is not a war fought with guns and bullets and planes and bombs. This is a war fought with facts. A war fought with information.”
Boyle ultimately joined Breitbart after the 2012 election, as Steve Bannon took over the website following Andrew’s untimely death.
“Andrew was a larger-than-life person. Oh, he was really funny too. People forget that. Andrew, his sense of humor was big, like beyond the average person. … The thing that I think he did the most is he inspired so many people. Look, there are dozens and dozens of people that are currently working at Breitbart — journalists and editors and reporters. And there are dozens and dozens, hundreds more that are a Breitbart alumni or people throughout and other publications that were inspired by Andrew,” Boyle said, describing Andrew Breitbart’s impact and legacy.
“I think he inspired so many people to go out there and fight the same fight he was fighting in their way, with the tools that they have. And that’s what all of us need to continue to do, I think, is we take that mission forward because it is a righteous mission of righteous indignation. It is the battle plan,” Boyle said.
