Colby Hall Says Alex Jones’s ‘Days In the Sun Are Probably Ending,’ But Don’t Expect Him To Go Away: ‘Hucksters Hustle’
Mediaite Founding Editor Colby Hall said Alex Jones’s “days in the sun are probably ending” now that he’s lost InfoWars, but urged don’t count the conspiracy theorist out just yet during an appearance on NewsNation Thursday.
Hall went on air to discuss the news that satirical website The Onion won control of InfoWars through a bankruptcy auction. Jones announced on Thursday morning that he was informed by his lawyers that InfoWars had been bought. The bankruptcy option stemmed from Jones facing $1.5 billion in damages following multiple defamation lawsuits from the families of the victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Jones pushed a conspiracy theory that the shooting had been faked. He’s since admitted it actually happened.
Hall argued that InfoWars began a “super lucrative” business model that has since been followed by pundits like ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson. He also noted in true Onion fashion, the satirical website put out a statement that some took as real.
Hall said:
InfoWars basically started the whole sort of business model of spewing kind of comedically absurd conspiracy theories like, you know, chemicals were making frogs gay and monetizing that traffic by selling products, and it actually was super lucrative. You know, there’s two sides to this story. One, it’s really sort of relieving for the families of the Sandy Hook, the Sandy Hook families who lost their children in this terrible massacre, which, of course, Alex Jones said was a conspiracy, was a hoax. There was crisis actors, and so there is some probably solace for those families. As The Onion is, you know, a satirical comedic website from a newspaper. And even, I have to say, the press release that you just read isn’t real in that it’s a parody — and it’s sort of a problem that The Onion put out this press release that a lot of media outlets are taking at face value when really it’s sort of a parody, but how would you know? It’s so arch. I mean, it’s so urgent, it’s confusing, but it’s punctuation at the end of the sentence. And Infowars will now be part of the Onion empire and be another outlet for satirical jokes.
On the question of what happens to Alex Jones now that he’s lost his platform, Hall predicted the conspiracy theorist’s glory days may be behind him, but urged his audience not to expect the hustle to stop.
He continued:
Who knows? I mean, part of me thinks, who cares? What’s weird is that Alex Jones was really sort of was the kind of progenitor of the form, like when he started all this conspiratorial stuff, he was the outlier, an outrage machine and as it turns out, you know, there’s some conservative, really leading voices and conservative voices kind of pivoted to that model, namely Tucker Carlson, who in his first year or two at Fox News didn’t rate that well and then kind of went sort of to that end and brought in a lot of young viewers who who sought that out. I think Alex Jones will be a lot less wealthy. I think he’s still a provocateur. He just won’t have the same platform, so I think his his days in the sun are probably ending, but he’ll be hustling because hucksters hustle.
Watch above via NewsNation.
