June 12, 2020’s Knowledge Fight dissects Alex Jones’ baseless coup claims about Biden and Trump, his debunked Lincoln assassination conspiracy theories (ignoring Mary Surratt, David Harold), and wild tangents—like a "psychic victory" at 8:30 CT or an imagined orgy with John Bolton. Jones’ shifting narratives, from Uyghur labor to Hollywood’s racial justice performativity, expose his opportunism and factual instability, while hosts mock his lack of consistency, even as he pivots to unrelated topics like hospital murders and Manafort pardons. The episode underscores how conspiracy-driven rhetoric thrives on misinformation, leaving credibility in tatters. [Automatically generated summary]
So, Jordan, today we got an interesting episode to go over.
We are talking about June 12th, 2020.
This is 2020.
It's Friday of last week, and part of the reason for it is that because we have to record this, I'm still, as you're listening to this, I'm still in the process of getting all set up at the new apartment and everything.
And so we wanted to not leave you too high and dry.
So, Jordan, on our last episode from Monday, we discussed how Alex was going hard on this new video that this woman had put out where she was accusing doctors of killing people in hospitals.
So this is something that came from an interview that Biden did on the Daily Show, where he said that he was pretty convinced that Trump would refuse to leave if he lost the election.
Biden said that he was convinced that the military would recognize that that was a huge problem if Trump lost the election and refused to leave office and would escort him out of the White House.
He's not saying that there's going to be a military coup, just that in the event that Trump doesn't recognize the result of an election he lost, Biden has faith that it would be handled appropriately.
I'm not as full of faith, but I don't think that Biden's position is that outlandish either.
I still think there's a decent chance that worrying about Trump not stepping down if he loses is a little premature.
There are plenty of circumstantial reasons to be concerned about that, and I've come a lot closer to worrying about it myself, but it just seems like such an explicit and unretractable move that I have a hard time imagining someone doing it.
Not respecting the result of an election is something that couldn't be walked back or undone.
It would necessitate a very severe reaction, whether it be the military taking him out or outbreaking hostilities in the general population.
I think it's an okay thing to consider and think about what to do if Trump does that.
But it's just such a monumentally bad thing that I can't operate on the assumption that it will happen.
You understand what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a distinction there of like, yeah, it's a possibility, but like obsessing and thinking like that is what's going to happen.
I think, like, and part of the reason that I think this is that, like, in 2015, Alex and all his ding-dong followers were convinced that Obama was going to call off the election and install himself as the king of a new Islamic caliphate of America.
It looked silly to us because obviously it was, but it felt real to them at the time.
Sure.
And I know that Trump has given far more reasons to suspect that that's the way he would behave.
The power of you, the audience of activists, being active and realizing this is an information war and taking the live feed of this show from Bandon Video or newswars.com forward slash show and sending it out to your email, sending it out to your text message, calling people physically and saying they admit the coup plot.
That means they're getting ready to go live.
They have to get their people to hear that to believe it's legitimate.
Two years ago, I briefed the Secret Service on their plan to remove the president.
They didn't even know that globalists were on TV saying they were going to kill the president.
Like Phil Mudd of the CIA, to prepare the deep state to believe they can actually make the move.
You have to telegraph the announcement to create false confidence.
He's trying to argue that Biden going on the Daily Show and saying that if Trump loses and doesn't leave office, he believes that the military will escort him out of the White House.
Alex says that him saying that is the equivalent of globalists coming out and announcing their coup plot.
They got to go on TV and make these announcements to ready the crew.
To reinforce this argument, Alex brings up how he briefed the Secret Service about a Phil Mudd interview on CNN that he believed to be the same thing, the announcement of a coup plot to kill Trump.
Here are the two problems with this.
One, that Phil Mudd interview is three years old, and at press time, no plots to kill Trump have been launched.
That doesn't seem like it was the announcing of a plot at all, mostly because there was no plot and nothing happened.
The second problem is that Alex talked to the Secret Service about this Phil Mudd interview, and they did nothing about it, which clearly indicates that the Secret Service did not think that this was anything serious, and it was really just a guy talking shit on TV.
You would think if there was an actual instance of Phil Mudd announcing a coup on TV and Alex briefed the Secret Service about it, Mudd should have had some consequences.
And secretly, he's working for the CIA and he helped cover up Sandy Hook, but my lawyer told me that I should pretend not to believe that last part anymore.
And when Mudd went on TV and said, we will kill this guy, the CIA will kill this guy, the government's going to kill this guy, that was done to telegraph confidence to their networks embedded in the government that they were trying to get other people to create false whistleblower reports,
take information to the media, and to then finally get somebody else to muster up the courage to poison the president, to shoot the president, to kill the president.
That's what this is, is agitating to hope somebody else does it.
Alex won't use the term because he's mocked the idea when people have talked about him doing it.
But what he's trying to say is that he believes that Phil Mudd is engaging in stochastic terrorism.
Mudd went on TV and said that the government was going to kill Trump, hoping that someone would hear that message and take it as a sign that they should do it themselves.
That's what Alex is saying.
This is really murky territory for Alex.
And honestly, I think it's the last thing he should be introducing as something he's accusing his enemies of.
The problem is that he does this all the time.
He constantly talks about how his enemies should be killed and how they're all going to burn in hell far more graphically and explicitly than anything Phil Mudd said.
If Alex is directly asserting that Phil Mudd's comments on TV are legally actionable to the point where he met with the Secret Service about them because he was, you know, Mudd was hoping someone was inspired to attack Trump because of his comments, then Alex is asserting that he himself belongs in prison.
Generally, when Alex talks about this stuff, he says that Mudd's comments were part of the lesser magic stuff, where the globalists have to announce what they're doing before they do it in order to get magical power out of their rituals.
That's stupid, but at least it's not self-damning.
This angle where Mudd was trying to inspire lone actors to carry out his goals is a really bad direction for Alex to go down since it heavily implicates his own behavior.
I would have advised it against him if I were in the studio.
But the word is on Bolton, he knows all the connections.
He knows all the players in the State Department, in the UN, in the Pentagon, and that he will be an apparatchic or a tool, a effective munchkin to use his words, to carry out the policies that the president once carried out, and that he won't sit there and leak information.
To Steve Pieczenik's credit, he was opposed to Bolton explicitly and consistently, but Alex did not listen to him.
Alex thought Roger was more important at the time, so he took Roger's angle, that Bolton would be a tool that Trump could use against his shadow enemies.
All that didn't work out so great for everyone, and now Alex is trying to pretend that he was always on the right side of this one.
Hated noted national hero John Bolton, who, when in a position of power to do something about those many impeachable offenses, was like, nah, go for it.
So we've touched on this a little bit before, but the only evidence I can find that Phil Mudd is related to Samuel Mudd is a 2014 tweet from Jake Tapper.
It might be true that they're related, or it might not be.
So, anyway, to Alex's larger point here, Samuel Mudd was not the only other person charged in the plot to assassinate Lincoln.
For instance, David Harold was in the barn with John Wilkes Booth when he was cornered.
Harold surrendered, but Booth did not, eventually being shot by Boston Corbett, the subject of one of the best episodes of The Dollop.
Harold was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging, along with three co-conspirators.
This is kind of a big deal because one of them was Mary Surratt, the first woman executed by the U.S. government.
Three other conspirators were sentenced to life in prison, and one got six years.
Dr. Mudd was pardoned a few years later, since it wasn't really clear if he was in on the plot or may have just been the doctor who Booth knew, who treated someone who was in distress who showed up at his house, being unaware of what had just happened.
It's not like there was Twitter in 1865.
Alex is supposed to be this big history buff, but here he is clearly demonstrating that he has absolutely zero awareness of the details of one of the biggest events in U.S. history.
I strongly, strongly suspect that Alex only knows about Dr. Mudd because of Nicholas Cage bringing it up in the second National Treasure movie.
Because if Alex knows about the Lincoln assassination enough to know who Samuel Mudd is, it's impossible that he wouldn't know about Mary Surratt.
If you're an Infowars listener and you think Alex knows what he's talking about, you have to ask yourself, how could he fuck up something that seriously and that casually?
How can he assert a historical claim that's absolutely and easily falsifiable and then just move on with it?
Like the fact that Alex is so comfortable fabricating information about history, like that Mudd was the only other person convicted in the Lincoln assassination, that should be a serious red flag.
If Alex is capable of that kind of lie, what else is he asserting as definitive fact that he's just making up?
You're showcasing the exact same ignorance that Alex does.
He doesn't understand the words and what they mean.
He thinks that saying turd blossom here is an insult because the word turd is in it.
But there's a very specific term being used in a very specific history.
Turd blossom was a nickname that George W. Bush affectionately gave to Karl Rove because of his masterful ability to take a piece of shit and bring a flower out of it, metaphorically.
Turd blossom is also, it's not an insult.
It's a term that really only has the connotation of admiration, particularly in the realm of politics.
It's also the term for a flower that grows from manure, but that, too, isn't a good basis for an insult.
I get that Alex wants to compare Bolton to shit, but the flower is the contradiction of the shit, not its extension.
A turd blossom is something that's beautiful growing out of something shitty.
Alex just heard the term and assumes that it's something pejorative, much like you did, because it involves poop.
But in proper context, calling Bolton a turd blossom is complimenting him.
So on a recent episode, Alex accidentally did a satanic ritual with a skull, some roses, and a chessboard that he didn't realize had occult significance.
So this turns into a thing where Alex, I don't think he's being defensive, but at the same time, he's trying to rationalize why he has a statue of Robert E. Lee.
I mean, that's why people like Robert E. Lee, I mean, soap operas have nothing on this.
The North loved Robert E. Lee.
There were articles by the thousands over the years and just everything because he fought armies on average four to one, five to one, and won for three years.
Yeah, if you've ever listened to our show or listened long enough, you'll notice that Alex has two different stories about the Civil War that he likes to trot out depending on what point he's trying to make.
Whenever there's a situation in the world where black people are rightly asserting their right to equal treatment and the conversation of the history of post-slavery America comes up, Alex tries to invalidate all of those arguments by saying that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves.
And, you know, when you really think about it, black people should thank white people for ending slavery.
That's his argument in order to rebut those arguments.
However, when it comes to defending the Confederacy, whenever Alex needs to justify his absurd support of Confederate generals without sounding racist or trying not to sound racist, he's quick to point out that the Civil War wasn't about slavery.
He'll often say that it was about states' rights or the economy, both of which are just code words that people use to deny that the Confederacy seceded over slavery.
Sure, it was states' rights, but the particular right of the state that was in question was slavery.
Alex is saying that the Civil War was about Western expansion.
What do you think he means by that?
Could it possibly be about whether or not newly admitted states to the Union would be slave or free states?
The Missouri Compromise advanced slavery west of the Missouri, west of Missouri, excuse me, which would be a problem for any of the Confederate states, people who are landowners there who might be interested in asserting their state right to have an economy.
They worked off free labor of slaves in any of that new land.
So, Western expansion, yes, of course it's an issue, but at the bottom of it, also slavery.
Alex knows damn well what the Civil War was about, and you can tell because he's explicit about it being about slavery when he wants black people to shut up and thank white people for ending slavery, ignoring the fact that he claims to literally be his ancestors, who he said on many occasions fought for the Confederacy.
I have no idea what the fuck Alex was trying to say there, but it sounded a lot like he was saying that Robert E. Lee was adopted by George Washington, which isn't true.
I'm not sure that Alex understands this lineage or how meaningless that is, but the fact that he's speaking so unclearly here makes me pretty worried that he doesn't know the full story.
From that article, quote, Lee's heavy hand on the Arlington, Virginia plantation prior rights nearly led to a slave revolt, in part because the enslaved had been expected to be freed upon their previous master's death.
And Lee had engaged in a dubious legal interpretation of his will in order to keep them as property.
One that lasted until the Virginia court forced him to free them.
He didn't want to free the slaves that he had, that he had inherited, but they made him do it.
No, I literally, because I remember, because I read that piece in The Atlantic, and I remember, like, I had this huge flashback to when I was in like third or fourth grade, hearing about the Civil War and hearing really, really nice shit about Robert E. Lee the whole fucking time.
Like, it was insane to me.
And especially looking back, like, wait a second.
Why are you guys spending a quarter of this Civil War thing on how great the losing general was?
From this Atlantic article, quote, Lee's cruelty as a slave master was not confirmed to physical punishment.
In reading the man, the historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor's portrait of Lee through his writings, Pryor writes that Lee ruptured the Washington and Custis tradition of respecting slave families by hiring them off to other plantations, and that, quote, by 1860, he'd broken up every family but one on the estate, some of whom had been together since Mount Vernon days.
The separation of slave families was one of the most unfathomably devastating aspects of slavery.
And Pryor wrote that Lee's slaves regarded him as, quote, the worst man I ever see.
And that's not all.
When Lee was in charge of the Army of Northern Virginia, they invaded Pennsylvania and, quote, enslaved free black Americans and brought them back to the South as property.
Pryor writes that, quote, evidence links virtually every infantry and cavalry unit in Lee's army to the abduction of free black Americans with the activity under the supervision of senior officers.
Robert E. Lee is at best a horrible piece of shit.
And Alex is not defending him because he's good at battle strategy.
It's because he was the commander of a racist army that tried to overthrow the American government because they couldn't own people anymore.
These people are the cover for MS-13, Chinese operatives and others that are actually lasing targets all over the United States, literally and figuratively, to make their move when they overthrow and kill Trump or drug him up and say he's had a mental breakdown or a stroke.
They're going to hit a lot of people.
You're like, that's crazy.
Now they're going to hit talk show host, members of the Senate.
They'll kill Ron Paul.
They'll kill Ted Crimo.
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I'm telling you, I've analyzed their attack profile.
Alex is right that there are very serious issues that need to be addressed about the state of China's treatment of the Muslim population.
Totally.
But I will absolutely never trust Alex to be a credible voice on the subject.
He can be right about a central point and also be completely wrong and detestable at the same time.
One of the main reasons is because he doesn't mean what he says.
Here, he's trying to use the plight of the Uyghur population in China as a prop to attack China, pretending he cares at all about the actual people he's talking about.
But he doesn't.
He doesn't give a shit about these people past the point he can use them as a blunt instrument to attack his imagined enemies.
And I know that because of this, something he said less than a month ago on May 26th.
When Alex wants to attack Apple, he cares very deeply about China's treatment of Muslims.
When he wants to spout his outrageous Islamophobia and convince his audience that Islam is trying to take over the West, he encourages China to do their thing.
It is a really good case example for why, even if you kind of agree with the main point behind what Alex is saying, you can't ever let yourself agree with him.
He doesn't agree with himself.
And if you ever consider him an ally because of a point you seem to agree on, it'll look like a mistake in hindsight.
All the left-leaning people who thought that Alex was cool because he attacked George W. Bush come to mind here.
No matter the subject you're passionate about and find yourself thinking Alex is right about, whether it's Bush hating or opposition to civil asset forfeiture or denouncing China's treatment of Muslims, you will always be able to find a smarter, more credible source than him on every single issue.
People who actually care and they mean what they say, who are more than just intellectual sadists trying to take advantage of an audience.
Yeah, it makes me think so much of this forced deference given to so many politicians by the media and the rules of reporting, wherein, you know, you report what a politician says or something like that.
There's no accounting for bad faith.
Like, I don't believe a fucking word Mitch McConnell says.
Even if Mitch McConnell said literally everything that I believe straight into a camera and said, we're going to do it.
More funny than a plastic banana, the $3 bill, telling us about how they're bad and they're white and they apologize and they're going to be better now.
It's like one of those high school camping trips, you know, everybody's sitting around looking under the stars, and somebody's like, Do you believe in God?
And the other guy's like, Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be in an orgy with John Bolton trying to get a heart on?
So anyway, Lee Strand hands-on, and his interview sucks, but he wants, he's explaining that the globalists, what they're doing is they're taking this domestic issue, which would be, I don't know, black people being murdered by the police.
Yeah, I mean, if you are somebody who is like Lee Stranahan, you fancy yourself an investigative journalist whose time is valuable, who's like, I am a professional.
I really appreciate other Steve Pieczenik popping in on short notice, but he's really been critical and almost broke with Trump when he brought in Bolton.
I agree it was an insane idea, but Bolton, he didn't then.
There's always a vulnerability that a political appointment can manipulate, and in turn, the president manipulates the candidate.
So you have a mutual kind of manipulation.
In this particular case, Bolton knew a lot about Trump, and my suspicion is his sexual activities, which Bolton had been part of many, many years ago in New York.
Well, it seems like he should be implicating himself in the very treason that he's describing on account of him watching it and not doing anything about it.
If you're committing, if you watch somebody commit treason, don't you commit treason?
And Alex, I don't know if you know this, but this is firsthand from the people involved.
Steve is working with Mike Zirinovich and Jack Posobiec now.
I know people who were working directly with them, and they told me their goal was to destroy you, that they wanted to get all, and this was at the time when those guys were on the network.
And somebody who worked directly with them said they would talk all the time about destroying you.
If I could do this all over again, and we had a third person here, I would love to have written a script of Bannon, Jack Pasovic, and Mike Cernovich trying to take down Alex.
Oh, God.
Okay, so what I'll do, what I'll do is I'll go to Comet Ping Pong Pizza.
I think, I mean, if I had to be a cynical-minded person about it, I would say it's some of the same reasons that you'd want to pardon Roger, and that is that they know a lot.
But I mean, that's if you're in that kind of, I guess, but it just, their whole economy blows up if a lot of the whole, not the entire right-wing ecosystem, but particularly that of Alex and the sort of associated figures.
A lot of the sycophantically pro-Trump, especially people who associate with Alex, because Roger was basically running InfoWars for a while.
So, I mean, we come to the end of this, and this episode is, you know, it is what it is.
I'm fascinated by the fact that on Thursday, Alex was so preoccupied with this video from this nurse in New York, and it completely falls off on Friday.
He's now preoccupied with an interview Biden did on the daily show.
There's little coherence.
There's a very minimal amount of coherence to this.
I think that there's a possibility for that, but it does, like, as a listener, it does feel a little bit jarring for it to be like, they're killing fucking people in hospitals and this video proves it.
And then it just be like, hey, Biden's on the daily show.
If you have any belief in what it is you're saying, there's no possible way that you can spend a whole show on all doctors are murdering people for money.
And then the next day be like, did you see what Biden said on the daily show?
But I honestly think that the most important thing on this episode is that Alex thinks that only two people were charged in the assassination of Lincoln.
Like, I would say that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln is, I mean, there's a lot of very important events that shaped American history, but that is a gigantic one.
And it's such a piece of the story of the Lincoln assassination that it seems impossible to educate yourself on the subject and not know about her.
And if you know about her, then you can't say that Mudd is the only other person who was charged.
And if you know about what happened after the assassination, you know that Booth fled with Harold.
So you know that there's another person who was with him that got captured.
Like you can't think that.
Alex is just fucking stupid.
And when you see things like that, that to borrow from a philosopher named Alex Jones, that's a Rosetta Stone through which you can see all of Alex's bullshit.