Fired DOJ antitrust official Roger Alford has been portraying himself as a “genuine MAGA reformer” who supported “President Trump’s populist conservative agenda,” which he claims was undermined by “MAGA In Name Only” lobbyists. However, he recently appeared on a podcast to attack the Trump FCC and FTC for going after DEI and censorship.
In the interview, hosted by Christina Caffara, a left-wing consultant for Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, Alford was asked if he agreed that “enforcement is being used to pursue agendas that are unusual for antitrust. Things like freedom of speech, a view against DEI and wokeness . . . This is particularly true . . . of the FTC.”
While Alford defended some narrow antitrust actions against collusion on censorship, he told the left wing Big Tech consultant, “I agree with you that there is a legitimate concern that the antitrust enforcers in at the FTC and to and the FCC . . . embracing the culture wars with gusto, rather than focusing on the sort of core concerns of the American worker, which are. . . more pocketbook issues.”
While Alford did not specify what “culture war” activities he objected to, both Trump’s FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, and FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson have made fighting the left-wing cultural dominance in corporate America a top priority.
Under Brendan Carr’s leadership, the FCC required T-Mobile and Verizon to remove DEI as a condition to merger approval, consistent with the agency’s public interest guidelines. Andrew Ferguson required the dominant ad agency Omnicom to commit to end political discrimination and ad boycotts against conservatives as a condition of merger review, in addition to many antitrust and consumer protection investigations into deceptive practices and collusions to censor, ESG, and misleading information about transgender medicine.
Alford also claims that Gail Slater, the current head of antitrust at the Justice Department, would agree with his critique of Carr and Ferguson, stating, “We want to, as Gail would always say, ‘keep the main thing the main thing.’ That means making sure that you really keep your eye on the things that matter to the average consumer, to the farmers, to the renters, to the blue collar workers that are just trying to make ends meet.” In other words, he wants to prioritize progressive economics over fighting DEI and censorship.
The podcast is not the first crack in Alford’s “MAGA reformer” façade. The Daily Caller reported that Roger Alford once attacked Trump at the CCP-connected Renmin University in Beijing, China, in a speech entitled “Donald Trump’s Proposed Trade War with China.” According to contemporary reports, Alford called Trump’s anti-China posture “ludicrous and uninformed” because “A fundamental shift could harm Americans broadly and U.S.–China trade relations in particular.”
Alford’s pro-China stance is relevant because he claims he was fired for opposing the Justice Department’s decision to settle the merger between HPE and Juniper, a move his superiors at the DOJ deemed necessary to help compete against China.
As Breitbart News previously reported, the late great Charlie Kirk wrote that “the pre-Pam Bondi-confirmed Justice Department’s attempt to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s acquisition of Juniper, which would create an equipment powerhouse to compete with CCP-subsidized market leader Huawei,” and urged the Justice Department to approve the merger.
Alford also faces a potential ethics probe over his media tour. The Center to Advance Security in America filed a complaint with the Board on Professional Responsibility, District of Columbia Court of Appeals, against Alford for violating confidences and acting against the interest of his former client, The Justice Department.
The rift appears to be deepening, with a Trump DOJ spokesman calling Alford “the James Comey of antitrust.”
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
