Google’s senior director of U.S. public policy, Adam Kovacevich appeared to describe the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) as a “sideshow Circus,” in a leaked audio recording in which he also argued that Google should remain a sponsor of the conference to “steer” the conservative movement “away from nationalistic and incendiary comments.”
The comments came to light in leaked audio files allegedly of a company-wide meeting at Google, part of which is now exclusively reported by Breitbart News. Another part of the transcript was released last Friday on Tucker Carlson Tonight, while further snippets revealing Google’s funding of establishment conservative think-tanks were published by the left-leaning tech magazine Wired in December.
The alleged meeting took place in the wake of Google’s sponsorship of CPAC in 2018, which triggered an internal rebellion from left-wing employees of the tech giant. Breitbart News exclusively reported on the revolt at the time, in which radical left-wingers inside Google accused CPAC of “ethno-nationalism” and “hate.”
Google has not denied the authenticity of the leaked material.
In the clips, the transcripts of which posted in full below, Kovacevich portrayed CPAC as a conference with a “dual identity,” one being a “premier gathering” that features a “whole swath of conservatives,” including “national security conservatives, economic conservatives, libertarians, the Log Cabin Republicans, deficit hawks, small government advocates.”
In the audio clip, the other side of CPAC was described in disparaging terms by Kovacevich as featuring a “sideshow circus-like element” which “CPAC organizers have intentionally cultivated sometimes, inviting outrageous figures that say incendiary and offensive things, I think in order to draw more attention and controversy to the conference.”
“I want to be clear that we don’t agree with those things, right?” continued Kovacevich. “We abhor and rebuke the offensive things that are said at the conference. Those things obviously don’t align with Google’s values and our approach.”
“And I think it’s challenging for us to reconcile those two identities of CPAC.”
In another audio clip of the same conversation provided to Breitbart News, Kovacevich appeared to describe the importance of reaching out to conservatives in order to counter conservative media, including Breitbart News. Kovacevich warned of “growing negative attention from the conservative media which is influential among those same Republicans who control government.” He went on to accuse conservative media of “pushing the storyline that Google is biased against conservatives.”
“And of course we aim to build products for everyone but if that notion becomes accepted among conservative and Republican policymakers, that could be harmful to our mission of building products for everyone.”
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