Project Veritas founder and president James O’Keefe spoke with Breitbart News from the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit about his memories of working alongside Andrew Breitbart, conservative censorship on social media platforms, and the future of fighting against mainstream media giants.
“Andrew Breitbart taught me that it really is about getting yourself into the New York Times. It’s about getting covered by the mainstream media. It’s about forcing them to cover the word, getting outside the echo chamber,” James O’Keefe told Breitbart News’ Jerome Hudson. “So, there really is nobody … like the way that he was, but we try at Veritas to break these stories that force media to cover it. That force reactions and that’s sort of what Andrew taught me.”
O’Keefe then discussed the censorship across several different big tech and social media giants.
“You can’t be silenced into submission. You have to keep fighting. You have to have the courage to continue and I think one of the things that we’ve done is go undercover into Twitter, and we’re going to go after the other companies as well.”
He added, “If you want to ban people for their views, just be honest about it. So we’re trying to capture these engineers and executives on tape admitting why they’re removing people from the platform.”
O’Keefe also stated that citizen journalism is necessary and important.
“I think it’s necessary. I think that it’s become the journalism. It’s no longer citizen journalism. We are the journalists,” O’Keefe claimed.
He also outlined how Andrew Breitbart instructed him to be himself and remain genuine.
“I believe that journalism is an activity, not an identity. I think Breitbart gave people the inspiration. I mean, he would bring out the best in you. He once said to me ‘James, you’re like the Incredibles, you know, you’ve got this inner force, this inner spirit. Grab onto it and be who you are meant to be.”
O’Keefe also shared his thoughts on how to combat leftist outrage in the future.
“I think that we just have to keep going after the sacred cow. CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, you know, the big media,” O’Keefe told Breitbart News. “We gotta go after these organizations. We gotta expose them and I think the truth will set people free.”