Alex Pfeiffer, communications director at the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. received kudos from Breitbart News on Saturday for developing an “analytical mindset” and factual approach in his prior career in right-wing journalism. While he was a producer for Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, Pfeiffer privately blamed Donald Trump for the January 6 insurrection and described the then-president’s supporters as “terrorists, but especially dumb ones.”

Pfeiffer, a former reporter at Carlson’s The Daily Caller who followed him to Fox, appeared on Breitbart’s Sirius XM show March 15. 

“I like that you’re a journalist by trade, before you got into the political game, because I think you approach things factually and with an analytical mindset, very similar to how we do at Breitbart,” Breitbart Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle told him.

Boyle is correct to the extent that, in practice, success in right-wing journalism means looking past or lying about Trump’s depraved behavior in order to make money from his zealous supporters and own the libs.

Pfeiffer was one of numerous Fox employees whose private messages were revealed through Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox. Those communications showed that Fox’s top executives and big stars, including Carlson, amplified Trump’s lies that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen even though they knew those claims were false out of fears that if they did not do so, their Trump-obsessed viewers would abandon the network.

The Dominion filings show Pfeiffer describing Sidney Powell, the Trump lawyer responsible for some of the most absurd conspiracy theories about Dominion that aired on Fox, as “a fucking nutcase” who was “lying.” Trying to push back against the election denial conspiracy theories that Fox viewers wanted to believe was like “negotiating with terrorists,” he complained, “but especially dumb ones. Cousin f----- types not saudi royalty.”

But Pfeiffer’s most revelatory comments came in messages to Carlson during the host’s January 6, 2021, broadcast, just hours after a violent mob of Trump supporters stalled the peaceful transition of power by storming the U.S. Capitol. In language that could have come from a member of the January 6 select committee, Pfeiffer condemned Trump “for everything that happened today.”

“Millions believe that the election was stolen because of Donald Trump and demagogues like this Drew guy,” Pfeiffer said, referring to right-wing reporter Drew Hernandez, who had suggested to Carlson’s audience that antifa infiltrators had been responsible for the violence that day.

“They take the president literally,” Pfeiffer continued. “He said it was stolen. They believe him. He is to blame for everything that happened today.”

“The problem is a little deeper than that I’d say,” Carlson responded.

“Obviously the problems are deep but at the core of it is Trump saying it was stolen,” Pfeiffer replied.

“Not the core,” Carlson replied. “Awful but a symptom.”

“He promoted today’s rally a month ago and said it would be ‘wild,’” Pfeiffer said. “Come on.”

“There is just too much circular logic going around,” he added an hour later. “Yes millions of people think the election was stolen, but they didn’t just wake up with that belief. They were told it was stolen and that was amplified in talk radio/memes etc.”

“The president of the United States has told his supporters daily for months that the election was stolen,” Pfeiffer texted Carlson later that night. “His allies parroted this. He promoted a massive rally in DC. They all flew in. He then encouraged them to go to the Capitol and the rest is history.” 

He went on to criticize Trump’s “lies giving people hope” that the election would be overturned and his refusal to “disavow” the QAnon movement.

Pfeiffer apparently got over all that pretty quickly. His LinkedIn profile shows that he was promoted that month from investigative producer on Carlson’s Fox show to investigative & editorial producer with his hand in Carlson’s Fox Nation programming as well. He remained in that role for more than a year, as Carlson launched a 1/6 Truth movement based on the fraudulent premise that the federal government had masterminded the attack as a pretense to target Trump’s supporters and mocked concerns about QAnon. 

Pfeiffer finally left Fox to start his own communications firm in June 2022 and quickly aligned with the former president’s most loyal supporters. He joined the MAGA Inc. super PAC three months later, alongside Trump stalwarts Chris LaCivita, Steven Cheung, and Tony Fabrizio; the former two now play senior roles in the Trump campaign. 

The group has raised tens of millions of dollars from major Republican donors and made headlines earlier this month for an ad which aired before the State of the Union attacking President Joe Biden for his age. For right-wing journalists like Boyle and operatives like Pfeiffer, that is apparently worse than his opponent “making the Jan. 6 attack a cornerstone of his bid for the White House.”