The Knowledge Fight Battle Kitchen dissects Alex Jones’ bizarre alliance with Steve Bannon ahead of his July 25th trial, where Jones—already default-guilty—praises Bannon as a "great thinker" despite past mutual insults. Deposition clips from Infowars insiders like Robert Jacobson (15-year editor) and Adon Salazar may expose internal knowledge of Sandy Hook conspiracy theories, with experts like Fred Zipp and trauma therapists testifying against Jones’ defamation. Bankston frames the trial as medically vital for grieving families, while Friesen mocks Jones’ performative claims and warns of his potential to drag others into legal trouble. The episode ends by questioning whether Jones will even show up, leaving his credibility in tatters. [Automatically generated summary]
So, folks, big developments in the world of Alex Jones.
This is a bizarre way to start the show, but here's the reality.
I'm sitting here and I'm recording this with no Jordan.
I am mere hours away from getting on a plane and flying to Austin, Texas, where me and Jordan will be enjoying...
Enjoying seems to...
Make it sound like fun.
We will be partaking in and observing the trial that Alex Jones is going to be going through.
But, unfortunately, I can't take any time off because what happens here?
What happens here on Saturday but does Steve Bannon release a fucking episode of his War Room show where he interviews Alex in order to promote his stupid documentary, Alex's War?
And so I feel like I've got to talk about it, but there's no Jordan.
And it just leaves me to think.
Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods?
Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?
unidentified
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and turn and I dream of what I need.
And look, here's one of the things I hate most about Steve Bannon.
We can all agree on team trying to be better people that it's not good to make fun of somebody for their appearance when there's so many things that have nothing to do with their appearance that are actually why they're terrible.
But he looks like something a British person would eat.
He looks like a blood sausage in some sort of blancmange.
and had a coalesced into a baby and unfortunately it also happened that he was like the person who had access to the most money and the deepest understanding of what the internet had changed about human social interactions circa 2014-ish.
In fact, there's one this week from Christianity Today that's largely silly but makes a good point of highlighting the thing about Bannon that's important, which is kind of the understanding he came to about the fantasy.
worlds that people like to live in.
And there's a bit he goes on where he's like, you know, imagine this guy, Bob, who's a fucking accountant or some shit.
Bob dies and, you know, some fucking mortician has And then imagine, like, online, Bob's got this big digital presence in, like, World of Warcraft or something, where he's this great warrior and a thousand people show up in the internet to actually, like...
What would Bob identify more as?
What identity is more real?
The thing that Bannon came to is that if you can provide people with an outlet for their fantasies that allows them to feel like whatever weird little communities and fantastic worlds they've gotten involved with online are impacting the real world.
If you can make them feel like what they're doing online matters, if you can build them A chance to feel like a hero through doing nothing but sitting at their computer, you could actually get quite a lot done.
I don't know.
I'm not explaining it super well, but Bannon translated that into Gamergate.
Yeah, I wish I had more hope that this was like the dying gasp of a wounded animal rather than the step one in me eventually seeing billboards with Alex's face on them in Times Square.
Yeah, his signal is right, there's a lot of static, you know, he'll throw around a lot of bullshit, be wrong about everything, but yeah, you can trick yourself into thinking that he knows things, and he's right a bunch of the time.
And then at the end, you can hear him bring up the transhumanism, and that's because I think that Bannon just wants to be like, alright, look.
There's a lot of bullshit.
There's a lot of dumb stuff.
But Alex has been saying that they're going to put robots inside you for 20 years.
See, there are people who do it and it's not the government that's doing it.
But it is...
It's a trend that could progress into some kind of a robot arms or something, or it might not.
Who knows?
For years and forever, science fiction writers, they write about these questions of what does it mean to be human, and obviously this is going to be fertile territory for it, so conspiracy theorists talk about it.
And it's safe.
It's safe, and that's why Bannon wants to...
Like, really center things there.
And I think that's a good move on his part.
I think it's smart to do that instead of some of his other stupid shit about the EU doing 9-11.
I was thinking about, like, if I could feed Glenn Greenwald one question to ask in that Q&A session, it would be, who is the head of the EU right now and what is their position called?
I bet he couldn't name it.
Or even swap it out with the UN.
Who's in charge of the UN and what is that position called?
There is a difference between, like, I don't know.
Yeah, there's a difference.
I guess when you start to compare the consequences, the size and relative influence of the New York Times makes me think you could probably argue that their failure in the Iraq War did more damage than a lot of the stuff Alex has done.
I take no delight in Steve Bannon's new problems, but they don't surprise me because we know definitively that he directly contradicted his testimony at my trial.
You see, sociopaths and psychopaths, or weak people that have been abused themselves and they go out and do it to others, they usually feel like they're owed something.
I find a lot of times that's really what it is.
I think Bannon's kind of one of those.
He wants to show everybody he's the big man, he's the tough guy, he's the leader, he's in control, and he's got to overthrow everybody around him so he can feel like he's big, he's number one!
I mean, if the North Korean boat story had stuck, I think Alex would want to see Roger silenced in some way, taken to prison.
Also, I love the idea, I was going back through some of these Bannon clips, I didn't realize that Alex had suggested that he was a sociopath who had been abused, and that was why he was on this power trip.
But it's hard to come on here, Steve, because I've admired you, and you were the brain behind a lot of what Trump was able to do, and you've had the most courage of anybody out there standing up to this January 6th fraud and really bringing America back.
So it's hard to come on your show and then talk about myself here.
It's surreal with what you did not backing down to the committee.
And them and their kangaroo court and how they wouldn't let you cross-examine people.
I'm facing three rigged lawsuits run by Democrats.
Same ones in Travis County that indicted Rick Perry and Tom DeLay.
I'm not allowed to say I'm innocent at my trial next week that starts.
They put an order out.
You cannot say you're innocent.
You cannot say it's rigged.
I mean, it's insane.
I'm supposed to sit there and not talk and not say I'm innocent.
This is the end of America.
So if they can destroy Steve Bannon and Alex Jones, they can destroy you.
So I'm just honored.
And I'm not gushing here just to gush.
I mean, I don't gush.
I'm gushing because literally we are in the arena.
And you and I, and you at a greater level, I've got to say, they are so scared of you, and so I admire your work, and I have really, really pushed people that have attacked you and stuff to not, because they're wrong, and when they do, they're buying into the globalist propaganda.
So I am really, this is a big bucket list being on your show, and I'm so proud of the fact that it's exploded, and everybody talks about it.
I'm at the grocery store, I'm at church, everywhere.
Almost every day, people go, man, I really love your show, and I love Steve Bannon.
Did you see this?
Did you see that?
And I don't get, like, envious.
I feel good when I go to sleep at night.
Like, if they put me in prison or kill me next week, at least Steve Bannon's out there.
Well, I mean, it seems like the thing Alex always does, which is that he's capable of having a wide variety of opinions, largely negative, about other people who are prominent, until those people are willing to talk with him for 30 seconds, at which point they become his favorite person.
It's like, you know, it's how we can go from threatening Joe Rogan's children to talking about how he's leading the, I don't know, whatever, the evolution of the human mind or some shit.
The point I don't think people get about you, we do at the War Room, and I personally do because I followed you for years, is that you're not just a man of action.
The guy that they see on that show every night, the guy they see at the bullhorn, the guy that's taking leadership and saying, hey, I'm like in the first tank and we'll drive this.
As much and as important as that leadership is, the true thing that you've done...
Which is stunning.
If you look at the evidence of that and the facts, you are one of the great thinkers of this.
That is very rare.
You've got to go back almost to the revolutionary generation.
You know, people that have watched his show know me over the years.
You know, the Financial Times, The Economist, we go through.
That's the way we play every day.
We start with MSNBC and CNN clips.
We're not playing conservative right-wing news.
So I'm a huge believer in information and collecting information.
And I go to, I watch the Infowars every day and follow Alex Jones closely.
You know why?
He can put you ahead of the curve.
And he's been demonized as a conspiracy theorist, right?
I got to tell you, this book, The Great Reset and The War for the World, is the left and the mainstream media are going to have to sit there and we've got to force them to respond to this book.
I've heard rumblings of this, and there's been talk of it, but Alex is apparently coming out with a book, and I think it's getting rushed out because there's a bit of a blitz going on right now, and the timing is not suspicious.
In terms of his trial happening, starting on the 25th and going probably until the beginning of August or so.
So on the 29th, you have his documentary coming out, and then his book is supposed to come out in early August.
So I think there's a little bit of a, like, let's have something else to talk about kind of vibe going on.
There's a couple things I think about this book.
The first...
Is that there is 0% chance that Alex wrote this book.
Well, and I wouldn't be surprised, given him being the guy that he is, if he does a lot of, like, dictating.
That's how Hitler wrote his book, you know?
Some people have too much, like to walk around and talk too much to actually write a book, and so those people have their Rudolf Hess, or their whatever guy wrote Alex's book for him.
The book is The Great Reset and The War for the World.
This is a seminal work.
Yes, I know Madeline Peltz and our marketing director over at Media Matters is going to melt down.
I dare anybody to go through this book and read it and see the references that are cited and the deconstruction he does of some of these major works by major...
I mean, he pretended that it was a child molestation den and I just thought it had pretty good pizza.
But hey, you know, we're close.
Robert Malone.
Yes, that's right.
The Sonic just outside Columbia, Missouri.
It's a mess.
That place is haunted, for sure.
So this interview is, I'll be honest, there's a lot of content in it that would just be really pointless and boring for anybody who listens to our podcast.
Alex will throw out things like, why the future doesn't need us, or...
Ecoscience by John P. Holdren.
Like, he'll throw these things out as if he's, like, making an actual argument, but it's just sort of scattershot references.
So I don't particularly care about that too much.
I want to focus on how sad this is.
Alex hates Steve Bannon.
Bannon has never acknowledged Alex.
And here the two of them desperately try to out-complement each other.
They fear loyal Americans that believe in America and are promoting it because they know that's going to be popular.
They have to shut that down.
They can demonize Steve Bannon and destroy Steve Bannon.
They can demonize and destroy Alex Jones or Donald Trump.
And I'm not trying to put myself in that league, but that's the league.
It's like Trump, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones.
The main target's kind of going down from there.
I think you're probably a bigger target than I am because you're respected and also you have your intelligence background and they know it was the brain trust, find a lot of Trump's successes.
I wish more people were selling their tanks, because then I might be able to buy one.
But, you know, you said something a second ago about what connects Alex to common people.
And I know what you meant by that, but now all I'm thinking about is Alex getting together with Ben Folds, like Shatner did, and doing a cover of Polk's Common People, which I think Alex actually could knock out of the park.
Of the judge's order of the first of three rigged Sandy Hook trials where I've already been found guilty, I've been defaulted when I gave them everything and more, which they used as a blueprint to further debank us and deplatform us.
And the judge put in the order for the trial where I'm guilty that I cannot say I'm innocent, says word for word.
May not say you're innocent in any way.
Well, if I was a murderer caught with dead bodies in my basement, I could get up and say I'm innocent to the jury.
I could say I'm not guilty.
No, I am guilty, and I can't cross-examine anybody, and I can't raise the First Amendment, and I can't say the trial is rigged.
But then we're ordered to have this trial, or I'll be held in contempt.
She did a million-dollar fine a month ago.
The Court of Appeals turned it around in one day and said, pay it.
I paid a million dollars, and I'm out of money.
They finally run me to ground.
I paid a million dollars on Monday that literally brought the campaign down to like $300,000 in the bank.
So they think if they can break us and destroy us, that's their symbol of the American people.
Trump always says, look, they've got to get through me to get to you.
And it's totally true.
We have decided to stand up because we love America and we can't stand seeing this happen.
We're not heroes.
We just can't.
It's like being raped.
And so they see us standing up and they can break us and smash us.
They can do it.
And this is not my rights that are being robbed.
It's all of our rights.
I mean, when Steve Bannon cannot cross-examine people at his own trial in a rigged D.C. situation, we are all having our rights stolen.
And when I can't say I'm innocent and can't say I'm bankrupt and can't say there's three trials coming up, literally, she says we can say almost nothing.
But we have to be there.
And so that's where this is.
And again, I'm just blessed that it's not criminal.
I really don't like him comparing him after like half a decade in court having to pay money for slandering the families of dead children to being a rape victim.
I agree with you, and he compares that, he uses that comparison a lot, and I will say that I don't often include it on our show because of it being usually, like, obviously always offensive.
All of the stuff Alex is saying are the products of his decisions.
He had every possibility to be able to raise a First Amendment defense.
He didn't do it.
He got fined a million dollars because he kept sending incompetent corporate representatives and the judge ran out of options.
He can say that the trial is a staged, rigged thing, but he'll be taken out of court, probably held in contempt, just like anybody else in a courtroom would be.
He's not special.
There's no special victimhood here.
It's the product of his choices, because he knew that if he went to trial, he would lose.
And if he went to trial, he would lose, and it would be embarrassing.
If he just decided not to participate, he'd end up losing by default, and this would be the situation we were in.
And he could be like, oh, if only I had my day.
If only they allowed me to defend myself.
It's all just bullshit.
It's the same thing Bannon's doing, and it's the same thing Roger Stone did in his trial.
All of them don't defend themselves in the time when they're given the opportunity to, because they know they don't have shit.
Yeah, because there's fucking no way to defend their behavior, so their only defense is stretching it out as long as possible, I guess, and hoping that, once again, the system does not actually penalize them in any meaningful way.
Like, who knows?
Bannon will probably get a week in a fucking resort prison or some shit.
Yeah, you just kick your feet and kick up dust and kind of just hope that eventually you'll have some resolution where you don't have to reveal more information that would be more destructive to your industry.
That sucks.
So I'll be in Austin, and I'll be watching the proceedings where Alex is not allowed to bring up the First Amendment.
He's not allowed to call it a show trial.
He can't say that he's innocent because he's already been found guilty, so it's irrelevant to the case.
He's lost by default.
I wonder if Alex will actually show up to the courtroom.
I mean, number one thought is that it's worrying that Alex and Steve are getting closer together, because those really aren't two worlds that I like being tied close together.
More than anything, Dan, I'd like people to listen to the Ben Fold's William Shatner album has been, particularly the cover of Common People that Shatner does on it, because it fucks.
I was watching a little bit of that earlier before we started chatting, and the director was sitting in between Greenwald and Alex, and she had her head down for long stretches of time, seemed to not want to be there.
I'm not sure if I was reading too much into the body language, but can't blame her.
What you can predict is that anything you think is about to happen is exactly what's not going to happen.
The one thing I do have to say about it, though, it's like the comfort I have going into this, is we have a trial judge who I know is not going to tolerate nonsense, right?
Like, we've been waiting four years to get this thing tried.
It's just dead set, determined to get it tried.
Joneses and courtroom theatrics aren't going to be an issue.
There's a question that I had that I wanted to run by you, and that is actually, it came up earlier when I was talking to Robert, and that is that do you know if Alex is actually going to have to be there?
I mean, look, at this point, I don't need anything.
I mean, I don't mean to be glib about it, but look...
I think as people who followed the show before know, the default judgment that resulted to us is, while theatrical and climactic to the case, is meaningless.
It doesn't mean a damn thing.
It's not like you were going to walk into this trial and people were going to go, that's not defamation.
That's not an intentional infliction, emotional distress.
In other words, what I want to say is this is out of my hands at this point.
You can say all you want about how you perform in a trial, and there's going to be lots of cameras on me, and there's going to be lots of people judging me from that respect.
But as far as what I can do to those 12 people in the box and the decision they're going to make, that's out of my hands because this is purely about press play and let them react.
There's going to be 12 jurors, and they're going to come up with a number.
Personal life and around all this, I have a lot of shaken faith in our systems and institutions.
One thing, and particularly in jury trials, I really do.
I have a lot of cynicism, I guess is how you could put it.
I've built up after seeing how juries react to certain things, and sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.
But one thing I can say is, this particular trial, this particular trial is so unique.
There's never been anything like what Jones did.
What we would call in law a matter of first impression.
This is the first time a jury is going to have to look at this kind of conduct.
Ten years of somebody torturing parents of murdered children, they're going to have to come up with a number of what it's worth.
And whatever number they come up with is the correct number.
Because not either party in this courtroom, I am convinced.
is going to have much of an effect of what they decide that correct number is.
They will be faced with what is basically undisputed facts, and they will face the same controversy and national outrage that has consumed part of the country for so many years on this, and they will come up with that number.
And I'm kind of hands-off.
I've gotten the case as well as position I could ever get a position for trial, and at this point I put it in the hands of those 12 Austin jurors.
Actually, one of my most rewarding things I do on this case is for the first time when I show somebody a document, an email, a piece of deposition footage that they didn't know, and their jaw is on the floor.
Or, you know, some of the people that you're going to be seeing at this trial, and I'm going to give kind of like a, you know, okay, so I know your viewers love the deposition episodes.
But what I want to let your viewers know is there's going to be a bunch of deposition testimony clips played at this trial that they've never seen before.
There's going to be a bunch of new stuff, and I'd like to preview that.
But you're going to see a couple of things in this one.
One is the one that everybody already knows from your show is you're going to see a small clip played during the trial of Brittany Paz, and we're going to be hearing from her as the corporate representative.
And then you're going to hear another deposition from this case that nobody's ever heard before, and that's Robert Jacobson.
And Robert Jacobson was the former video editor for nearly 15 years at InfoWars, and he will testify some very, very surprising things.
And I'm being careful because obviously I don't want to disclose things that are in confidential depositions that will become public at the moment they're at trial.
But there are, yes, Robert Jacobson is going to be testifying by deposition and that's going to be a very surprising...
Deposition for a lot of people.
The other is, I know a lot of people know from the saga, InfoWars reporter Dan Badandi.
And then the last sort of surprise that there will be is, and this may not even be the last one that's a surprise, but you've got to keep some of them a surprise.
Exactly, right?
Yeah, you've got Kit Daniels, who was deposed in our case and in Fontaine, and in fact broke down in tears for what he did to Marcel Fontaine.
He is going to be appearing in his Lafferty deposition, because he was also deposed there as well.
So we're going to have testimony from him there.
So we have a lot of people, and we'll have a lot of people at trial.
We have experts.
They're fully disclosed, so I don't mind telling you that we're going to have Fred Zipp, the longtime editor of the Austin Statesman, testify about journalism and the standards of care.
He's now a University of Texas professor.
We'll have...
Becca Lewis, who, if any of y 'all are Twitter people, y 'all might know Becca as one of the foremost combatters of misinformation out there.
She's a top-notch media researcher, and she's going to be testifying a lot about the spread of Infowars' message.
And then we'll also have the therapist who's treated...
Neil and Scarlett since the day of Sandy Hook.
And as well as Dr. Roy Lubit, who is a pharyngeic psychologist who is published in the field of denial of trauma.
And he's going to be talking to the jury as well.
And we'll be seeing from the plaintiffs and a variety of Infowars employees.
So it's going to be, you know, a lot of people were kind of worried coming into this, if it just being a damages trial, are you going to get the full measure of what happened here?
And you absolutely will.
We're going to be going through the entire story of what happened and everything that's necessary.
For that jury, since you're kind of deprived of the trial itself, there is a need perhaps for the jury that's deciding these damages to have some of that in this context.
If you're talking about what you're saying a number for the damages, you should have an appreciation for what the damage is.
I think the important part to hear is that the jury won't just be compensating for their harms to the plaintiffs.
They'll also be awarding punitive damages to address the wanton malicious conduct.
And in doing that, they'll have to really consider how bad was this conduct.
So we're going to need to do a deep dive into exactly what they knew, when they knew it.
And I think, you know, even for Knowledge Fight listeners, I think it's going to be deeply surprising for them just the sheer volume that they...
That they attacked the subject with, the amount that they tormented people, and the absolute depravity of knowing what they did was wrong, that the people they were talking to were crazy.
It's really a shocking story, and for it to be all aired in one place, it's finally going to happen.
You know, even for me, somebody who's pretty well-versed in this, when I came down for the deposition, seeing some of the materials was pretty surprising for me.
Like, I can be as cynical as the next guy, and for me, there was even a...
I don't want to say benefit of the doubt, but there was a...
I don't want to assume the worst until you see some information.
Some of the...
I guess some of that is public because it was in those depositions, but some of those Wolfgang HowBig emails, some of the indications of awareness of things, it was pretty eye-opening, and I assume there's a lot more.
My friend, I have searched high and low, I have uncovered every rock, and I must report to you that they are, like the snows of yesteryear, gone from this earth.
In fact, Leanne has not made much of an appearance in videos that have been public and stuff, but there's going to be videos of her and Rob Dew talking about some of the most vile stuff in this case.
This idea that the Super Bowl choir was actually the murdered children.
I mean, I keep seeing that of him showing up on the show and talking all this stuff, and it's like literally Alex Jones wrote an affidavit saying, Barnes, botch the case, and please don't do X and Y because we got rid of Barnes.
God, what a stupid joke when you see them up there.
I'd like to even further emphasize what this means for the families, and I don't mean to be overdramatic about this, is that when you have a plaintiff who is actual injury, when him and Scarlett's actual injury is the denial of their trauma, then the vindication of a jury verdict is not just about justice.
It is, I don't want to be overdramatic, medically necessary.
Do you understand?
Like, they need to have this moment.
They need to have a public reckoning where it's recognized their son was real, this was bullshit, what he did to them was bullshit.
Like, this needs to stop being, the legacy needs to be how they vindicated the legacy of their child, not that their child's legacy is in doubt, all of this.
If that doesn't happen, if that doesn't fully happen, they can't ever heal.
Like, this trial is not even, that's its most important function.
Look, we're all going to get a lot out of it.
Culturally, it has a lot to gain.
But for these parents, if he doesn't come in there and face them, what the hell?
I don't know what kind of angles the cameras in the courtroom will have, but if you look, you might be able to find an Easter egg of this guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt of some sort.