Andrew Breitbart was ahead of his time, calling out “fake news well before it became a catchphrase,” Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) panel members pointed out during Thursday’s tribute to the late conservative giant.
The panel, “War: A Tribute to Andrew Breitbart,” featured radio host Larry O’Connor, Breitbart News Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle, Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, and Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk, all of whom exchanged stories and discussed the immense impact Andrew had on the conservative movement and the influence he still carries today.
“We started getting these newspapers and websites to retract fake stories, fake news,” said O’Connor, who identified his years working with Andrew as the “funnest time I’ve ever had in my entire professional life.”
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“Andrew knew about fake news well before it became a catchphrase,” he said, as the term “fake news,” hijacked from the left by former President Trump, is now mainstream.
“This actually was the brilliance of Alex Marlow, who is now the editor-in-chief of the Breitbart sites,” O’Connor continued, noting that Marlow was the first person Andrew hired. At the time, O’Connor recalled, Andrew told them to “brand the retractions,” leading to the creation of the byline called “Retracto the Correction Alpaca.”
O’Keefe, bridging Andrew Breitbart’s intensity and sense of humor, recalled how Andrew called and told him that the mascot for the Retracto theme song was an alpaca.
“We laughed until we cried. I don’t know why, but it was just so random and he was goofy and funny and we laughed until we cried on midnight in February 2010,” O’Keefe said. “That was a pretty amazing moment.”