Fox News Host Blasts ‘Abhorrent’ Alex Jones: ‘He Was the False Flag’
Fox News host Trey Gowdy tore into Infowars host Alex Jones over the weekend, describing the far-right conspiracy theorist as “abhorrent” for telling “lies for money” and waging “war” on the truth.
Last week, a Texas jury ruled that Jones must pay a combined $49 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the parents of a child who was killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Jones had repeatedly claimed to his listeners that the massacre, which left 20 schoolchildren and six teachers dead, was a “giant hoax” by the government and that the grieving parents were mere “actors.”
Gowdy was a Republican congressman when the massacre occurred, and he devoted a significant portion of his Sunday night Fox News show to criticizing Jones’ willingness to peddle baseless conspiracies for profit.
The former congressman contrasted the Sandy Hook parents’ perspectives with Jones telling his listeners it was a “hoax” and that the grief and pain the families suffered was “manufactured” and “an acting job.”
Still framing this through the parents’ eyes, Gowdy, also a former prosecutor, noted that even after they “picked out the child-sized casket” and lived “with the anguish every waking moment,” a person across the country was “heaping coals on your grief by denying the death and therefore denying the life of the very thing that mattered most” to them.
“He’s a career offender when it comes to denying the obvious,” Gowdy stated, turning his attention to Jones. “He has denied some of the worst tragedies this country has ever suffered through. Lying about anything is bad, but it’s particularly abhorrent when you tell parents who buried a child that their child is not really dead.”
He continued: “All microphones are not equal. It’s one thing to hide behind a microphone in some studio and spew hatred, malice, and misinformation. It’s another thing when the microphone you’re sitting behind is in a Texas courtroom. This week, when confronted by Lady Justice, Alex Jones finally admitted the truth. And the truth is, he lied.”
Gowdy noted that Jones ultimately acknowledged in court that “those children were murdered” and that it wasn’t a false flag or hoax.
“He was the false flag,” he added. “He’s the one who turned the death of a child into a ten-year-long torture chamber for the parents.”
The Fox host wrapped up his fiery monologue by wondering aloud how anyone who is “capable of exploiting” parents’ pain and “denying the obvious” was able to attract any audience in the United States. Furthermore, he asked why anyone would go on his show in the first place.
“On the list of despicable things to do: telling the parents of murdered children that their children really weren’t murdered ranks pretty high,” Gowdy concluded. “We shouldn’t need a jury, or a judge or a courtroom to condemn that kind of person and behavior. He tells lies for money, and then when his own money is on the line, he admits the obvious. The only war he is waging is on the truth.”
While Gowdy wonders why any respectable person would appear on Jones’ program, at least one of his Fox News colleagues has not only made multiple visits to Infowars in the past but has long expressed admiration for the unhinged conspiracist.
In recent years, primetime star Tucker Carlson has used his platform as one of the most-watched cable news hosts to gush over Jones and praise his increasingly unhinged rhetoric, even going so far as to say Jones is “a lot more talented than I am.”
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