#705: The Knowledge Fight Battle Kitchen
Today, just before heading out to Austin, Dan summons Robert Evans to discuss Alex appearing on Steve Bannon's podcast, before Dan is joined by a special surprise guest.
July 24, 2022 - Knowledge Fight
01:20:54
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dan and Jordan, knowledge fight. | |
| Need money. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| It's time to pray. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love you. | |
| 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. | ||
|
unidentified
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Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods? | |
| Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds? | ||
| Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed? | ||
|
unidentified
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Late at night I toss and turn and I dream of what I need. | |
| I need a hero. | ||
|
unidentified
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I am summoned. | |
| What is this? | ||
| Thank you, Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is this Robert Evans? | |
| Robert Evans. | ||
| Wow! | ||
| Brought magically to life by the power of music. | ||
| By the power of Pat Benatar, apparently. | ||
| Pat Benatar, who I mistakenly thought was the one who did this song, but I told you to sing it in Pat Benatar style anyway. | ||
| And here we are. | ||
| Here I am, summoned. | ||
| Well, thank you. | ||
| Thank you for answering the call of the Bonnie Tyler call for a hero. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| We're going to be sitting here, we're going to talk a little bit about Steve Bannon, having Alex on. | ||
| And I understand you've covered Bannon a little bit in the past. | ||
| Oh boy, yes. | ||
| As he was known in the Krasenstein's children's book, Leave Bannon, because he was a squirrel that lived in Donald Trump's hair. | ||
| Those guys were so creative. | ||
| Yeah, what a time to be an American that was. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's really what cancel culture took from us. | ||
| It did. | ||
| We lost the Krasensteins, and life has not been worth living for a single second since. | ||
| Nature has not healed. | ||
| Are they active on Truth Social? | ||
| Do we know if they're on the other? | ||
| Probably. | ||
| They must be. | ||
| I can't imagine they've given up. | ||
| If I were Trump, I would definitely give them a verified account. | ||
| They're great for him. | ||
| If I were Trump, I would make them collectively my vice president in exile. | ||
| He sucks. | ||
| We can all agree on this, right? | ||
| I don't like him. | ||
| 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 boiled? | ||
| Is that the implication? | ||
| He looks like one of those unsettling puddings that the British eat. | ||
| Blood sausage. | ||
| And I'm not a good enough person not to comment on it. | ||
| He looks like a half-English breakfast. | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| 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. | ||
| And he made a lot of hay with that. | ||
| Yeah, and unfortunately he was plugged into other folks who could do something with that too. | ||
| You know, that sucks. | ||
| He's He's very smart. | ||
| You can find articles and shit about it. | ||
| 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. | ||
| It sounds like he could just be studying a lot of Alex's shit, too. | ||
| Convincing the entire audience that they're fealty to him and supporting his show is a fight against this establishment powers. | ||
| There's a lot of what Bannon got that's just old fascism, right? | ||
| Like, that whole thing is pretty old fascism. | ||
| What Bannon did that was clever was weld it very effectively to sitting on your ass and, like, harassing people over the internet. | ||
| Like, that was the thing that he figured out kind of the gamification of, like, fascist militancy. | ||
| In a way that he was the first person to really lock it down. | ||
| And it has never, it has always been, it has been a potent force in American politics ever since. | ||
| Well, that sucks. | ||
| I have COVID, otherwise I would have described it a little better. | ||
| But you get the point, yeah. | ||
| I think considering COVID, Brian, you did a fantastic job. | ||
| So I heard that Alex was on Bannon's show, and I almost fell out of my chair. | ||
| I don't like hearing that. | ||
| What's your immediate response to hearing? | ||
| I mean, other than foreboding. | ||
| Does it seem weird to you? | ||
| If I had the power to pray in an airstrike, that would have been the spot. | ||
| Well, you're never going to get them because they're in that pandemic war room. | ||
| They're in that bunker. | ||
| You have to assume you'd need one of those bunker busters that Fox informed me about when we were going after Saddam. | ||
| Yeah, I've never listened to Bannon's show because I don't have time for the emotional energy. | ||
| But I did, I listened to this episode and I was shocked that their theme music is kind of, it's got a little bit of a rap flair to it. | ||
| And it's about how we're going to take out the CCP and we're going to be there until everyone's dead. | ||
| It's a pretty bizarre vibe that they got going on. | ||
| Apparently, if you go by the theme song, it's mostly about hating China, but that is not what I took away from this screening, this viewing. | ||
| So Alex is on, and it's really bizarre because these two, I don't know if I've ever heard them interact before. | ||
| They're huge figures in Trump world. | ||
| Yeah, I don't think I have either. | ||
| And I have some awareness of some beefs, which make this just seem even more unlikely. | ||
| So I was really excited to tune in and see what we would find. | ||
| And it turns out, I think a lot of it is a press tour for that documentary Alex's War that's going to be coming out. | ||
| I don't know if you watched any of the... | ||
| I've seen the ads for it. | ||
| I don't like that... | ||
| Bannon, who again I think has a pretty canny understanding of what's a productive road to go down propaganda-wise. | ||
| I don't like that he sees turning Alex into a cause celeb as worth his money and time. | ||
| Yeah, and it's either something bad about the moment right now or a sign of desperation between the both of them. | ||
| That's kind of how I'm seeing the ball breaking one of those directions. | ||
| Obviously, there is some reason to hope. | ||
| I don't want to be all Doomer here, because Bannon actually might do some time in the very near future. | ||
| Just got convicted this week as we record this on two counts of fucking around with Congress, both of which could put him in prison for up to a year. | ||
| And then you've got... | ||
| Alex, who is in the finding out stage of all of his court cases. | ||
| So I hope it's desperation. | ||
| I feel like their circumstances appear desperate enough that it's like, let's see what we can do. | ||
| You have a little bit of juice. | ||
| I got a little bit of juice. | ||
| Let's make a cocktail or something. | ||
| I don't know that I have... | ||
| 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, that is worrisome because you have something of a brand rehabilitation in some sense going on. | ||
| You have this documentary that's seeking to obviously in some way whitewash a lot of Alex's He's a big player. | ||
| because he's syndicated with that, like, America's Voice or whatever that thing is called. | ||
| And they've grown substantially in the... | ||
| Yeah, and Glenn Greenwald was hosting that question and answer thing earlier today about Alex's documentary. | ||
| There's a lot of fear. | ||
| I mean, obviously, I don't think Billboard and Times Square, but, you know, something. | ||
| Yeah, that's not great. | ||
| So let's jump in here. | ||
| I want to play this first clip for you. | ||
| This is here where Bannon's bringing Alex in. | ||
| He's setting the table. | ||
| About his feelings for this interview. | ||
| Because here's the thing. | ||
| People say Alex Jones is crazy. | ||
| He's a conspiracy theory guy. | ||
| He's a nutcase. | ||
| He's got these rants and all that. | ||
| What they miss is that this guy's ahead of the curve on so many different topics of signal, not noise. | ||
| He's one of the leaders in describing what transhumanism is. | ||
| It's dangerous in what's happening on this. | ||
| So, there's code that goes through a bit of this episode that is signal, not noise. | ||
| Which seems like just kind of a weaselly way to say, like, he's wrong about everything. | ||
| If you listen, he's going to be constantly wrong about stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
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But if you look at the big picture, you can kind of squint. | |
| Yeah, I guess. | ||
| That is an interesting way of, like, Bannon's phrasing of the Alex Jones was right kind of thing. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Which I guess is fair. | ||
| I mean, that is, you know, the mark of the beast. | ||
| The chipping of people and stuff is a... | ||
| That's like the safest big-scale future prediction to make, though, is that, like, they're going to start putting robot parts in people? | ||
| Because of course they are. | ||
| Like, not they as in, like... | ||
| But, like, yeah, of course people are going to, like, increasingly do more body modifications like we have throughout history. | ||
| Yeah, people are already doing that themselves. | ||
| There's DIY stuff. | ||
| I have a chip in my hand that has a business card on it. | ||
| It's just a thing people do because it's neat and they're bored. | ||
| Yeah, some people put magnets in their fingers. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| I have a friend who can use his hand to open the electronic lock to his front door. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Well, that I do agree with. | ||
| You think that was the EU? | ||
| Yep, yep, yep, yep. | ||
| Evidence has borne out. | ||
| A lot of people don't know this, but Osama bin Laden and Angela Merkel, same person. | ||
| Whoa, I've never seen them together. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| You know, I had this fantasy. | ||
| That's exactly right. | ||
| 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? | ||
| That's always the actual thing, if you really cared about interviewing Alex as a credible journalist. | ||
| Just ask him a basic question about fundamental facts of reality. | ||
| Who is running the EU? | ||
| How does the EU's economic system actually work? | ||
| How are decisions voted on and stuff? | ||
| Any kind of very basic reality question, he's just not going to be able to answer. | ||
| He doesn't understand any of it. | ||
| He can rattle off facts about the year that something happened or the name of some document, but anything past that, you're fucked. | ||
| If he was a smarter propagandist, there's all sorts of little facts he could learn that could make him better at that. | ||
| Like the fact that a big chunk of the EU's economic administration is done in a building in Berlin that was built for the Luftwaffe. | ||
| It was like Hermann Goering's offices because the Germans keep repurposing stuff. | ||
| So if he wanted to make a conspiracy out of that and he knew like three facts about the EU, he could actually put something together. | ||
| But he doesn't. | ||
| God damn it, Robert. | ||
| This is going to be on his show in a week. | ||
| It's too good. | ||
| I'm just trying to help the man out. | ||
| He seems to be having a rough one. | ||
| It is tough times. | ||
| So Bannon plays the trailer for Alex's documentary. | ||
| A number of times. | ||
| And there was one little clip that stuck out to me. | ||
| I'm going to play that here real quick. | ||
|
unidentified
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Alex Jones said the Sandy Hook shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 children, was fate. | |
| I try to tell the truth and sometimes I'm wrong. | ||
| Did the New York Times get in trouble for consciously lying about WMDs that then led to a war? | ||
| Still tens of thousands in conflict? | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| I think he's playing a little fast and loose with the details about that. | ||
| Because, for one, I don't know if it's fair necessarily to say that the New York Times caused the Iraq War. | ||
| I think the whole argument is that the Bush administration was planning to do it. | ||
| It long predated. | ||
| Maybe some sloppy reporting by the New York Times helped justify it. | ||
| Made it easier for them. | ||
| I think it'd be fair to say did not use the kind of journalistic rigor they should have. | ||
| But you know who else didn't use the kind of journalistic rigor they should have on the Iraq war? | ||
| Glenn Greenwald, who supported him. | ||
| Uh-oh. | ||
| If I were Alex, I would feed him a question to ask Greenwald about that. | ||
| Yeah, and also the New York Times in 2004 issued a huge apology about their coverage and the mistakes that they made. | ||
| Judith Miller was the... | ||
| The main person who's making the most high-profile errors, let's say? | ||
| And she got forced out of the paper in 2005, and has she worked in any meaningful way in journalism sense? | ||
| There are consequences for these folks. | ||
| It's just Alex doesn't care, and he doesn't know. | ||
| And he just makes things up. | ||
| They were reporting poorly. | ||
| He makes things up. | ||
| There's a bit of a difference. | ||
| 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 think you definitely could in terms of scale, for sure. | ||
| It's a different point, but I think that's fair. | ||
| But yeah, when you try and get yourself off the hook for your behaviors by being like, well, I didn't cause a war! | ||
| I don't know if that's meaningful. | ||
| It's still bad. | ||
| So Bannon gets around to introducing Alex here. | ||
| Here was what I thought was going to be like the beginning of a really exciting interview. | ||
| Alex, thank you very much for joining us. | ||
| Tell us about this movie. | ||
| A great filmmaker made this. | ||
| You're interviewed for it. | ||
| But other than that, it's their film, correct? | ||
| It is. | ||
| I mean, I've turned down a lot of other documentary offers because it's the establishment. | ||
| They always lie. | ||
| But I'd seen some of her films and knew that it was independent. | ||
| And it shows me in a bad light and a good light because, I mean, I'm a real person just like you. | ||
| But it's hard to come on here, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
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Ooh. | |
| It's hard to come on here, Steve. | ||
| That's an exciting line. | ||
| Now, the reason that was really exciting for me was because I know that Alex hates Steve Barron. | ||
| He should. | ||
| He's repeatedly, as I've learned through your show, attacked him. | ||
| Yes! | ||
| Almost constantly for years. | ||
| He's a scapegoat that Alex has used to try and get Trump off the hook for things. | ||
| And so I got really excited, and I decided that I would put together a compilation of Alex talking shit about Steve Bannon. | ||
| Well, I heard Bannon was forced out for leaking, but I didn't want to put out rumors, but I didn't get that from a White House source. | ||
| And now the president says that's the case. | ||
| I was on your show a couple of months ago, and I said that Steve Bannon was a complete sociopath, and eventually he would trap himself. | ||
| In his lies and his collusions with his colleagues. | ||
| I am for the indictment, conviction, and prison for Steve Bannon. | ||
| The reason is very simple. | ||
| Bannon is what we call a self-promoter. | ||
| A nicer term or a different term would be a BS artist. | ||
| He just sits there and goes, oh, I love Trump, and then sits back and watches his attempt to blow up the White House politically. | ||
| He lights the fuse. | ||
| Walks off a safe distance. | ||
| He goes, is it snowing outside? | ||
| No, it's dandruff. | ||
| Ketchup stains down the front of him. | ||
| I'm the liberty movement. | ||
| I came with money and took over Breitbart after he died. | ||
| I'm the kingpin. | ||
| I'm the god. | ||
| I'm the liberty movement. | ||
| Meanwhile, he's behind the scenes leaking everything. | ||
| The New York Times, The Washington Post. | ||
| By the way, leaking BS and running around, we now know, the FBI fawning and agreeing with the Russia investigation. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Stephen Miller basically took our research, our work, which is great, and presented it to the president. | ||
| It got adopted by Bannon. | ||
| Bannon didn't come up with all this. | ||
| Bannon is a movie screenplay writer. | ||
| Okay, they wrote a screenplay off this show. | ||
| And Alex, I don't know if you know this, but this is firsthand from the people involved. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Steve is working with Mike Cerenovich and Jack Posobiec now. | |
| I know people who are working directly with them, and they told me their goal was to destroy you. | ||
| Steve Bannon. | ||
| Traitor. | ||
| I don't like Stephen Bannon. | ||
| He's done some nasty stuff. | ||
| He bare false witness against Roger Stone. | ||
| The hindsight is 20-20. | ||
| All I can say is this. | ||
| Steve Bannon is so damn bad. | ||
| 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! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| So, I mean, it's pretty consistent. | ||
| I hope he does his Steve Bannon voice in this interview with Steve Bannon. | ||
| I hope he asks him about that plot to destroy Alex that Posobiec and Cernovich were working on with Bannon. | ||
| It would be fun if they just had, like, a frank talk about Steve Bannon's plot to destroy him. | ||
| Sure, or the facts. | ||
| Like two teams chatting after a footballs game. | ||
| Or what about, like, Steve Bannon perjuring himself in order to get Roger Stone locked up? | ||
| What about that? | ||
| They've said that's definitively, in Infowars lore, Steve Bannon lied to get Roger Stone thrown in prison. | ||
| Yeah, but given how much money Stone was costing Infowars, are we sure Alex thinks that's a bad thing? | ||
| Um... | ||
| 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. | ||
| That's particularly, there's a flair, a panache. | ||
| For Alex? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I agree. | ||
| So when I heard him say it's hard to come on, I was hoping, like, alright, we're gonna air it out. | ||
| This is gonna be great. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because for years, he's hated Bannon, but of course, he just proceeds to kiss Bannon's ass in a way that is just embarrassing. | ||
| I think if you listen to the end of this clip... | ||
| You'll hear Steve Bannon himself being embarrassed by Alex's behavior. | ||
| 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. | ||
| And this team you put together. | ||
| But the reason I want to have you on is the film. | ||
| Look, the film's a powerhouse film. | ||
| Ew. | ||
| That's, you know, you spend two minutes talking about, like, how... | ||
| It's your dream to talk to this person, and they're your hero, and then they just sort of like, I wanted to talk about your film. | ||
| That hurts a little, right? | ||
| I mean, it's not what you want. | ||
| No, that doesn't seem ideal. | ||
| So what do you think about this turnaround here? | ||
| 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. | ||
| You're second only to Tucker. | ||
| I never friend your children. | ||
| It is. | ||
| He hasn't done that with Tucker, though, right? | ||
| I'm going to guess that, like, because obviously he's gone back and forth on Rogan, basically everybody. | ||
| Has he ever said bad shit about Tucker? | ||
| Yeah, back in the day. | ||
| Back when he was, like, more of a Neocon bowtie guy, for sure. | ||
| Oh, sure. | ||
| Yeah, you're right. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| Tucker did used to be kind of... | ||
| Anyway. | ||
| Crossfire days, Alex had... | ||
| But back then, Tucker wasn't that big of a deal, and so it didn't come up often. | ||
| But I know that there was a little bit of disdain between them. | ||
| But even back then, Tucker did... | ||
| He came on Infowars once or twice, and it wasn't super hostile. | ||
| But it definitely was not like, this guy gets it, he knows everything. | ||
| It was more like, alright, I'm going to talk to this neocon for a little bit. | ||
| And we'll see if we can get him to wake up. | ||
| And then he wouldn't show back up. | ||
| But yeah, I think Alex knows better than to threaten Tucker. | ||
| Tucker is way, way more of a hold of the weird Trump zeitgeist. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I also think he's kind of scared of Tucker. | ||
| Like most of us all are. | ||
| But that may be me reading some into Alex. | ||
| What do you think he's scared of Tucker doing? | ||
| Like, labeling him a globalist? | ||
| I think he's scared. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think he's definitely aware that Tucker could do damage to him. | ||
| But I also think, more than anything, he's scared that Tucker's going to render him completely irrelevant. | ||
| True. | ||
| I feel like there's a little desperation in how he praises Tucker, if that makes sense. | ||
| I mean, you know the man better than I do, but that's just kind of what I've read. | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| I mean, as much desperation as there is in, I go to sleep at night comfortable knowing that if I go to jail, Steve Bannon is out there. | ||
| You know, there's desperation all around. | ||
| And some of it is like a recognition of being able to siphon publicity. | ||
| And then, yeah, some of it is probably a recognition of his obsolescence. | ||
| But he's been obsolete since the internet really picked up as much as it did. | ||
| YouTube largely hindered his stranglehold on gatekeeping conspiracy shit. | ||
| But Tucker gets to the old folk and says things really softly. | ||
| He brings extremism into a digestible paragraph. | ||
| He's just actually better at doing shit than Alex ever was. | ||
| Well, he makes it easier to swallow. | ||
| And I think that's what you hear from all the Nazi types, who are like, Tucker is just doing our shit better. | ||
| You'll hear that in message boards from time to time. | ||
| Here's Steve Bannon embarrassing himself severely. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| Alex is one of the great thinkers of our time. | ||
| Politically. | ||
| Culturally. | ||
| Spiritually. | ||
| Musically. | ||
| Musically, yeah. | ||
| He's got me listening to Duran Duran again, man. | ||
| By the way, I found a pretty dope cover of Hungry Like the Wolf by Real Big Fish the other day. | ||
| Would love to do that on Alex's show. | ||
| I will cut it in. | ||
| I'll splice it together for you. | ||
| Is that new? | ||
| That Real Big Fish cover? | ||
| It's years old, but it's excellent. | ||
| You can find it on the YouTubes and the Spotifys. | ||
| Did they do the Less Than Jake thing where they just became basically like a cover band? | ||
| I mean, I have not caught up. | ||
| I don't know when the most recent of their albums was, but they've definitely got a lot of covers. | ||
| I mean, that is the natural journey of every great ska musician, is to doing ska. | ||
| Because the secret of music that's at the core of all of human creation is that every song is better as a ska version of that song. | ||
| Yeah, everything is better with... | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Streetlight Manifesto did a cover of such great heights that is very, very fun. | ||
| Well, I mean, like, Less Than Jake became a cover band. | ||
| In theory, Real Big Fish has become a cover band. | ||
| Like, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes were the ones who got it. | ||
| They came out the gate a cover band. | ||
| Anyway, I saw the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones at Riot Fest last year and it depressed me. | ||
| That was right before Ricky Barrett became an anti-vaxxer. | ||
| I don't think anybody needs to be listening to the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones after that George Floyd album they put out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This was before that, I think. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It definitely was before I was aware of that. | ||
| So, Bannon loves Infowars. | ||
| And he loves Alex. | ||
| To the extent, I don't know if you'll believe this, Robert, but... | ||
| He claims that he listens every day. | ||
| Do you believe that? | ||
| Yeah, me neither. | ||
| But here he is saying it. | ||
| 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. | ||
| This book is that important. | ||
| No force necessary. | ||
| I mean, I'm not the left nor the mainstream media, but I'll handle this book. | ||
| So Alex has a book coming out. | ||
| I'm excited for you to handle this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, he's too rich to write a book, right? | ||
| Like, there's a certain amount of money. | ||
| That's not the problem that I would have. | ||
| I don't think that's the... | ||
| You don't think he can read? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes! | |
| No, I don't know if you can write a book by skimming. | ||
| But, like, I mean, I think you have a point. | ||
| Really rich people will have, like, ghost writers write something. | ||
| Or whatever, but Alex is so fucking lazy, he couldn't write an article on his own website. | ||
| He has a team of people to do that. | ||
| I have no faith. | ||
| I mean, the last book he wrote, in theory, I'm not even sure if he wrote that one, was like 15 years ago. | ||
| He wrote a 9-11 book. | ||
| Yeah, and again, I don't think he wrote that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Probably not. | |
| I bet Jason Burmess wrote it or something. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Well, if that's the case, I can't wait to read it, because the... | ||
| Person who could transcribe the nonsense that Alex is going to have thrown out. | ||
| I mean, the syntax is going to be revolutionary. | ||
| I think that the great English professors will struggle to deal with Alex's run-on sentences. | ||
| Hemingway-esque run-on sentences, I predict. | ||
| Yeah, I think that book's going to be dumb. | ||
| It's just about The Great Reset, so it's complaining about Klaus Schwab and that Noah Harari guy. | ||
| That's the guy who wrote Sapiens, right? | ||
| He's real scared about that guy? | ||
| I mean, Sapiens was kind of boring, but that's my take for the day. | ||
| I'm going to guess that your assessment is not going to match Alex's in this forthcoming book. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| I thought it was kind of boring. | ||
| Like most books that Barack Obama recommends, I didn't like it very much. | ||
| I don't think I've ever read it. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't gravitate towards the genre of futurist writings too much. | ||
| Like, I would rather... | ||
| Sapiens wasn't really very futurist. | ||
| If I'm thinking of the right Sapiens, it was just kind of like a history of hominids. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Noah Harari, yeah. | ||
| Okay, maybe I'm just categorizing it wrong because that's like what his... | ||
| Yeah, you're thinking of... | ||
| So I have not read this book. | ||
| He wrote another book called Homo Deus or Deuce. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I'm guessing it's Deuce. | ||
| Yeah, that's, I think, his futurist book. | ||
| Okay, that makes sense. | ||
| That's the sort of cubbyhole that he exists in with Alex. | ||
| So I just assume pretty much all of his career revolved around that. | ||
| So yeah, this book is going to suck, I'm sure. | ||
| But I'm excited for it. | ||
| I will definitely do a protracted series on it as soon as it comes out. | ||
| And that turns out to be exactly what Bannon thinks I can't do. | ||
| I'll tell you what. | ||
| Can you hang on? | ||
| We'd love to keep you for one more segment. | ||
| As long as you want, Steve. | ||
| This is awesome. | ||
| We've got Alex Jones. | ||
| 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... | ||
| This is not intellectual slumming. | ||
| Dare accepted. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I accept this. | ||
| I know that I'm not cool like media matters, but I'll handle this, Bannon, and I'll get back to you. | ||
| I'm sure he'll have me on to discuss. | ||
| I think there's a pretty good shot of you getting on Steve Bannon's show. | ||
| And if that happens, you're going to need to plunge the dagger of Tel Megiddo into the glowing spot at the base of his belly. | ||
| It's marked by a ketchup stain. | ||
| Yeah, that will finally bring the Kali Yuga. | ||
| I was looking at his guest list and I think I fit right in. | ||
| I mean, you got like Jack Posobiec, you got now Alex. | ||
| And you and Jack are such close friends. | ||
| We're so tight. | ||
| We ate at the same restaurant once. | ||
| 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. | ||
| This is two men brought low. | ||
| Well, you've been through this. | ||
| President Trump's been through this. | ||
| And what they do is they fear populists. | ||
| 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. | ||
| And so I'm not lavishing you, which is true. | ||
| Here's where I disagree with this because I think, like Trump, you have a, you know, as Bernard Charles said, only connect. | ||
| You have a way of connecting. | ||
| With the working class in this country, in the middle class in this country, that is very powerful. | ||
| I mean, one of my guilty pleasures is watching your rants, and they're absolutely amazing. | ||
| I mean, they're incredible. | ||
| You have a way of connecting like Trump has a way of connecting. | ||
| That is their biggest fear. | ||
| Their biggest fear is the education and enlightenment, the awakening of that army, of what I call the army of the awakened. | ||
| And they will take... | ||
| I think Tucker and I are far in back of that because you and Trump have a way of connecting, a hard connection with that. | ||
| You can't coach that. | ||
| That's a God-given talent. | ||
| That's just native charisma, and you have it. | ||
| I don't want to say that I've got... | ||
|
unidentified
|
What are they trying to do right now? | |
| They've done everything possible. | ||
| You've got this nice vibe of, you're awesome. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wait, wait, wait, wait. | |
| You're awesome. | ||
| Yeah, you and Trump are on the same God-given wavelength connection to the real folk. | ||
| Yeah, to the common people. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| You have this organic connection. | ||
| And I would suggest that maybe it's that him and Trump are like, they live in the fraud. | ||
| They live in that manipulation so much that people connect to it more easily. | ||
| That could be part of it. | ||
| And someone like Tucker doesn't really. | ||
| I was trying to think about what connects Alex to common people. | ||
| What is it? | ||
| He's been in media for 20-something years. | ||
| He's a millionaire. | ||
| He has multiple homes. | ||
| He lives in one of the liberal enclaves of Austin, Texas. | ||
| He is friends with celebrities. | ||
| He's having Steve Bannon tell him that he's one of the great thinkers since the Revolutionary Era. | ||
| He runs away from his fans when they confront him on the street because they scare him. | ||
| He has armed Blackwater security everywhere. | ||
| He has a tank! | ||
| There's nothing. | ||
| He just has a tank with an accent. | ||
| I think he did. | ||
| That's similar to what a lot of Americans are dealing with, having to sell their... | ||
| Having to sell their tanks, absolutely. | ||
| 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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If... | |
| Alex does lose everything. | ||
| We need to get him a record deal to do a Shatner-type album. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| But also very loungy, so in between songs, there's got to be a little bit of banter. | ||
| A little bit of spoken word. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, the other option is to just have Alex do an exact, perfect, word-for-word replica of Shatner's album Has Been. | ||
| So, like, Alex is singing that song about Shatner finding his wife dead in the pool and about being the washed-up former Star Trek star and stuff. | ||
| I feel like you could talk Alex into doing that. | ||
| He hates Shatner now. | ||
| So, like, he would do it just to get back at him. | ||
| Yeah, just to try to do a better job than Bill. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Because that album is fucking perfect. | ||
| I think Alex has the... | ||
| I mean, you know, Steve Bannon is complimenting him quite a bit, but I think he has the potential to be... | ||
| Like, Paul Stanley-level stage banter kind of guy. | ||
| Like, really make it its own thing. | ||
| He could revolutionize the art of saying dumb shit in between songs. | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| So, we got one last clip here. | ||
| It was not a very long interview. | ||
| It's just kind of a puff piece. | ||
| The promotion for the book that's not out and doesn't have a release date. | ||
| And the documentary. | ||
| So it's basically just that. | ||
| And, you know, when this episode comes out, I will already be in Austin for the trial. | ||
| And here's him, Alex, telling Bannon about this. | ||
| And everything Alex is saying is total bullshit here. | ||
| This is just offensive. | ||
| I have the motions in limiting at Infowars.com. | ||
| 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. | ||
| But that's okay. | ||
| Lizards are coming in and supporting us. | ||
| But this is a real war because you nailed it. | ||
| You stole my thunder because I understand why. | ||
| You want to show people this is Veritas. | ||
| We're simpatico because the truth is true. | ||
| They hate Trump. | ||
| They hate Tucker Carlson. | ||
| They hate Donald Trump. | ||
| They hate me because... | ||
| We are populist. | ||
| We love the people. | ||
| The people get that. | ||
| They can see it. | ||
| They can feel it. | ||
| And they see what we've gone through. | ||
| And they don't want them to have a spirit. | ||
| 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. | ||
| He will not stop talking. | ||
| 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 really, I dislike that, Dan. | ||
| I don't think you should be able to do that. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Yeah, deeply, deeply offensive, yeah. | ||
| But also usually, even if you tracked the thinking, it doesn't make sense a lot of the time, even just from a conceptual standpoint. | ||
| But I think there's important things to remember here beyond that, too, and that is, one, Bannon chose not to do a defense. | ||
| He could have done a defense. | ||
| He did not. | ||
| 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, it's hard to fault somebody for thinking you won't get any consequences based on the lack of consequences. | ||
| They don't usually, yeah. | ||
| 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. | ||
| That's something that I'm not sure about. | ||
| Does he have to? | ||
| I don't think he physically has to. | ||
| Is it like an option for him to not show up? | ||
| I would imagine there's... | ||
| He could just send his lawyers. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He doesn't have to testify or anything, I don't think. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, if he doesn't have to, I would have to guess he's probably not going to show up, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
But then the attention, the possibility of it being... | |
| But if he can't say shit... | ||
| But he can say shit outside the courtroom? | ||
| Well, yeah, I guess there's that. | ||
| Like, maybe it'll be worth it for him to show up outside or to show up so that he can go outside of the courtroom and, like... | ||
| He did a fucking impromptu press conference at his custody hearing a couple years back. | ||
| Oh god, yeah. | ||
| No, I had forgotten about that. | ||
| Okay, well, we'll see. | ||
| I could see him doing a little rally outside the courthouse or something, trying to promote his stupid documentary. | ||
| But yeah, we'll see. | ||
| We'll be posting episodes throughout the time there in Austin, trying to find some relevant folks to interview, perhaps, Yeah. | ||
| Giving some trial updates. | ||
| So, that'll be fun. | ||
| Robert, thank you so much for joining me. | ||
| Oh, thank you. | ||
| Do you have any closing thoughts about this disgraceful exchange? | ||
| 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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
However... | |
| Steve Bannon is really dangerous, and I worry about him a lot. | ||
| And Alex Jones has a Mr. Magoo-like ability to trip up people around him and get them into terrible, terrible trouble. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| So that could be fun. | ||
| So possibly this will go well. | ||
| 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 understand next week you're going to have a three-part Behind the Bastards about that album. | ||
| It is. | ||
| The bastard of that album is that I can't stop singing it. | ||
| Have everyone around you label you the bastard for incessantly singing Common People. | ||
| Well, they're probably going to label me the bastard because I think Shatner said something fucked up this week. | ||
| I refuse to read any new news stories about Shatner. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He is an old man and will be dead soon. | ||
| It's fine if he believes... | ||
| I'm unaware of anything past him going to space. | ||
| That is where I checked out. | ||
| That was the last thing I needed from him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You have fulfilled your narrative arc and we're done. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I sent him a letter the other day saying, you're allowed to die, William. | ||
| You let him go! | ||
| I let him go. | ||
| I let him go. | ||
| That's big of you. | ||
| Well, we should let ourselves go and wrap this up. | ||
| But thank you again. | ||
| People can find your podcast, Behind the Bastards. | ||
| Fantastic show. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And thank you for summoning me with the power of song. | ||
| I am no longer in need of a hero, but thank you for being one for me. | ||
| We will talk again soon. | ||
| Yay! | ||
| What a fine interview. | ||
| What a lot of fun to talk about how stupid Steve Bannon is. | ||
| Oh, wow, he's talking to Alex Jones. | ||
| God, can you believe it, Celine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Meow. | |
| I know. | ||
| Keep it quiet. | ||
| I have to pretend to meow for you. | ||
| Just going to kick back with a nice radler here. | ||
| Just a nice... | ||
| Treat myself. | ||
| You know I'm going to be taking this trip. | ||
| I deserve a little bit of a kickback. | ||
| A nice 2% beer. | ||
| That's about what I want right about now. | ||
| Dan! | ||
| Dan Friesen! | ||
| Mark Bankston here. | ||
| Mark Bankston, do you have a few minutes to talk about the Sandy Hook truck? | ||
| For sure! | ||
| I was just about to enjoy this nice beer that's really just lemonade, but I would love to have a chat with you. | ||
| Let's do it, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you doing? | |
| You know what? | ||
| Pretty even-keeled, you know? | ||
| Heading into the four-year build-up of the most surreal trial in American memory that's going to be watched by the entire world. | ||
| I'm really chill about it. | ||
| Yeah, it seems like it. | ||
| You've got a laid-back vibe. | ||
| I have to be honest, I am not thrilled with my radio theater that I just did there. | ||
| Okay, we could second take, man. | ||
| I'm very self-conscious. | ||
| No, I don't think the second take is going to be any better than the first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| But it's nice to talk to you. | ||
| I know that... | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to be in Austin. | |
| We're recording this on Saturday evening. | ||
| I'm going to be there in person tomorrow. | ||
| But I wanted to sit down, if it was at all possible, and thankfully it is, to talk a little bit about what people can expect of the coming trial. | ||
| It looks like it's going to happen. | ||
| There's no more bankruptcy stunts. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look, if you know what to expect, tell me. | ||
| I'm waiting with bated breath. | ||
| I'd love to know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I expect a dry heat! | |
| There is no way to tell what's about to happen, folks. | ||
| I'd like to say that it's a nice, planned, coordinated event, but I'm dealing with one of the most unpredictable people in, gosh, in living memory. | ||
| And yeah, who knows what's going to happen? | ||
| I think I know how it's going to go down. | ||
| But who knows? | ||
| I mean, there's one thing that is the preparation and the law aspect of it and the trial. | ||
| And I think you probably have your ducks in a row in terms of that. | ||
| The thing that just blows my mind is that this case is starting on Monday, so that's the 25th. | ||
| And then on the 29th, Alex is releasing his documentary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, well, I mean, I guess I'll take a break from trial and take a look at that. | |
| Are you like, what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you really think you're going to preempt the trial of the century? | |
| Because stop it. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| Yeah, he's trying to steal focus. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I saw him come out and do that Q&A of Glenn Greenwald right on the eve of our trial, and I'm like, really? | ||
| This is your best attempt to grab publicity after I've been absolutely smoking you in the entire global media for four years? | ||
| Come out with the guy who made the incel movie and the guy who almost got snowed and arrested and you're gonna like, okay, really? | ||
| Well, to be fair, I don't think Greenwald's that involved in the documentary. | ||
| I think he was just a gun for hire for that Q&A. | ||
| Just shows up for the Q&A, sure. | ||
| No, it's ridiculous. | ||
| 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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So yeah, I don't know dogs and you get fleas. | |
| My mama told me that in Texas, but I don't know if that's a regional thing or not. | ||
| Yeah, no, feeling good? | ||
| I feel like if, look, if he's burning time doing that, like, I don't know what's going on over there, man. | ||
| It's a mess. | ||
| And when they walk into this courtroom, look, I think a legitimate expectation is they're going to try to sabotage things. | ||
| They're going to try to cause a mistrial or some garbage like that, and we'll see how it goes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But, you know, one thing I got to say, you know, yeah, exactly. | |
| Right, exactly. | ||
| If you know anything about this suit... | ||
| 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. | ||
| He needs a some-nonsense judge. | ||
| He needs somebody who's like, I'm going to see where you're going with this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'll allow it. | |
| Yeah, go for it. | ||
| No, but that's not what's going to happen. | ||
| 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? | ||
| Have to be there? | ||
| That's an interesting question. | ||
| I was thinking that there's an entire possibility that he wouldn't even need to show up. | ||
| Like, the lawyers could just Okay, so I'm thinking about how to answer this question, because I'm starting to get asked it a lot. | ||
| So let's start with a couple suppositions. | ||
| One is, the entire world who is paying attention to this thing damn well expects Alex Jones to show up to his trial. | ||
| Damn well expects him to testify. | ||
| Like, that's part and parcel of what this is, right? | ||
| It's kind of anticlimactic for anybody who likes Alex if he doesn't. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Look, it's anti-comactive for me. | ||
| It's anti-comactive for everybody. | ||
| You want the hero shot, you know, basically. | ||
| Well, or whatever that shot is. | ||
| But think about it this way, right? | ||
| Like, this jury at some point, regardless of where they're going in their case, they're going to want to see Alex Jones on the stand. | ||
| They're going to want to see that. | ||
| And whether that happens or not, the interesting thing is I'm not in control of that necessarily. | ||
| Like, that's not a thing I govern. | ||
| And if Alex Jones decides he wants to kick back and just decide he's not going to show up to this trial, I can't. | ||
| I don't have the power to stop him under these circumstances right now. | ||
| And to your case, you don't really need to have him testify or anything. | ||
| You have no reason that you need to call him to the stand to make your case. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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. | ||
| That was already decided, so that's done. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All you've got to do is press play. | |
| I don't want to put it to... | ||
| 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. | ||
| And I mean, you have a lot of stuff to press play on. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| Based on even just the deposition stuff that we've covered, I imagine just seeing the reaction of people to a lot of that would be amazing. | ||
| 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. | ||
| A clip of Daria, and they run away. | ||
| Right, right, exactly. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Those just have been, they just love them. | ||
| It's baffling to me, but yes. | ||
| Actually, you know what I'm going to say? | ||
| Because if you listen to this, deposition's dry. | ||
| They're on YouTube. | ||
| They're rather dry. | ||
| But, dude, I don't want to like... | ||
| I'm tooting your horn or whatever, but the analysis y 'all do of in-between questions is just so great. | ||
| I feel like we should just become a deposition cast. | ||
| A deposition cast, exactly. | ||
| 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. | ||
| This raises the question. | ||
| After the trial, are there going to be a bunch of depositions that will be public that weren't before? | ||
| Because if so, deposition cast 2022. | ||
| Because here's the thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is our new direction. | |
| I want to let your viewers know this. | ||
| They have not seen or heard, because of the different rules up in Connecticut, they haven't heard me laugh any different. | ||
| They have never heard Chris Maddy to pose a witness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
True. | |
| They've never heard Matt Blumenthal to pose a witness. | ||
| They've never heard that. | ||
| We've seen a little bit of the transcripts that have come out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, you've seen a little bit. | |
| A little bit, right? | ||
| 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. | ||
| About what he knew and did inside of Infowars. | ||
| That would be fascinating because he's already said some pretty bad stuff. | ||
| Out in public. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| 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. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Nobody's ever seen Dan Badandi. | ||
| The Kraken! | ||
| And believe me, that's a very entertaining deposition. | ||
| Someone deposed Dan Badandi? | ||
| They did. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Dan, they did. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And I'll tell you, I hope that deposition does become one day fully public, because we're going to be playing clips from it. | ||
| But the entire thing... | ||
| It's as rewarding as you might expect it to be. | ||
| It is really something to see that man deposed. | ||
| I often commented that he's a police officer's dream because you ask him one question and he answers six. | ||
| It's fantastic. | ||
| He just does not have an off switch. | ||
| That's the vibe I got from seeing some of his interviews that he did back when he worked at Infowars. | ||
| It seemed like, this guy will talk. | ||
| Another surprise guest will be Adon Salazar. | ||
| Nobody's seen him the most. | ||
| And Adon Salazar is one of the chief writers at Infowars on Sandy Hook Talks. | ||
| It's very interesting. | ||
| And still like a major figure there. | ||
| I don't know if I've ever seen his face. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| He's very behind the scenes. | ||
| He followed me on Twitter for a little while. | ||
| And then once we mentioned it, he stopped following us on Twitter. | ||
| So there was something sneaky going on there. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| He's strange. | ||
| I don't want to say this because I don't want to put this on you at all, but my personal perception of him is he seems like a shithead. | ||
| I don't know if the deposition will color my feelings at all, but he seems like one of the worst. | ||
| I will describe him more in terms that the plaintiff's pleas would describe him as a deeply irresponsible and malicious journalist at every step. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is polite and diplomatic. | |
| 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. | ||
| There is. | ||
| There's a lot of surprises to come, and it's going to be quite a show. | ||
| Let me ask you a question here. | ||
| You're talking about surprises. | ||
| You're talking about Infowars employees. | ||
| Were you able to track down my man, Jakari Jackson, or my gal, Leanne McAdoo? | ||
| Because I want to meet them! | ||
| They're the old school people! | ||
| 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. | ||
| Well, you know, I guess it may be best to let them... | ||
| Actually, they were involved in all this. | ||
| I was going to say they weren't involved in all this. | ||
| No, they were. | ||
| No, they very much were. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Yeah, I remember that from some of the time I was going back over that period of their content. | ||
| It was a little disappointing. | ||
| Well, it was a lot disappointing. | ||
| It was a lot disappointing, yeah. | ||
| But here it is. | ||
| Yeah, this is going to be, I mean, obviously I don't want to say this is going to be fun because it's not. | ||
| It will not, I can tell you that, 100% no. | ||
| It will be cathartic and very interesting to see how it plays out. | ||
| I heard Jones say that he was going to have Barnes hosting the show so he could come to the trial. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, let's see if he does that. | ||
| Let's see if he does that. | ||
| The Barnes that he's thinking about suing? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| 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 mean, the code for that is Barnes botched the case, which I wanted him to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And now I'm blaming him in a meaningless way. | |
| Everything they've ever done is a lie to the court. | ||
| It's just disgusting how much they just abjectly lie to the court. | ||
| But I really do believe it's true that, like, if he's not in that courtroom, I mean, come on. | ||
| Look at the stuff that's like, even if you don't care about it, he wants to stay away from the parents. | ||
| He wants to reduce the idea that there's a conflict between him and the parents. | ||
| I get that, whatever. | ||
| I'm the guy, right? | ||
| I'm the guy who's the center of this conspiracy to take him down. | ||
| I'm the guy who has caused all these things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you don't show up in that courtroom to face me, man, what the hell? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Four years, buddy. | ||
| We've been building up to this. | ||
| You show up in that courtroom. | ||
| And I can tell you one person, even like, look, it shouldn't be just for that, for all of this building up. | ||
| But if he doesn't show up in that courtroom, I can tell you one person who's going to be damn disappointed in that is Neil Hussman. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because Neil has been waiting four years to look that man in the face in the courtroom and say, you're going to take this. | ||
| You're going to sit in front of a jury who appears. | ||
| He doesn't do that. | ||
| God, what kind of man is he? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| Yeah, that's something that gets really lost. | ||
| And I think it's intentional in the way that Alex discusses the case. | ||
| How he's so jammed up and how it's a show trial for him. | ||
| The reality is him trying to invalidate all of this is invalidating the family's right to have their day in court. | ||
| And then the flip side of that is that would also be his day in court. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| 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? | ||
| Yeah, it's the antidote to that negation is affirmation, you know, on some level. | ||
| Well, I guess I don't want to keep you all night. | ||
| Not at all, man. | ||
| Because we could talk for quite a while. | ||
| We could. | ||
| Is there any other important points you want to get across? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Any message to the wonks out there? | |
| First of all, thank you everybody out there in Knowledge Fight Land. | ||
| For the gummy worms? | ||
| Yeah, I've been real... | ||
| They sit and build some gummy worms. | ||
| That was really nice. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's the best fan base I've ever encountered in my life. | ||
| They're passionate and And supportive and, I don't know, love all of you. | ||
| If any of you reside in Austin, the trial is open. | ||
| It's your courthouse. | ||
| Come on down. | ||
| And make yourself seen there and be a part of history and see it all. | ||
| I would love to see you there. | ||
| But just, you know, if you can't... | ||
| But also leave me alone. | ||
| Leave me alone. | ||
| I'm socially awkward. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do not talk to me. | |
| Yeah, please do not approach me or any of that. | ||
| I will spray you with a spray bottle. | ||
| You just brought up a good point, though. | ||
| There is a live stream of the proceedings. | ||
| There will be a live stream if you need to find it. | ||
| All you need to do is go to YouTube and search the 459th District Court and you will find the court's YouTube page. | ||
| Tweet and support and do whatever you can to have the community cathartic effect that we need. | ||
| Do what you've got to do. | ||
| Just keep us in your thoughts and pretty soon we'll... | ||
| Be at the end of this long journey. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| No, I'll wear something respectful. | ||
| Yes, of course. | ||
| But yeah, no, it's going to be... | ||
| I was just about to say, it's going to be X, and I don't know what it's going to be. | ||
| It's just going to be. | ||
| Let's check it out. | ||
| Let's see what happens here. | ||
| It's going to be interesting. | ||
| I look forward to seeing you, and I look forward to this process working itself to its conclusion. | ||
| I hope everybody comes out the other side a bit better for it, except for Alex. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Thanks so much, Mark. | ||
| Best of luck. | ||
| Solidarity forever, my friend. | ||
| Amen. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first time caller. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love your work. |
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