#727: Chatting with Sebastian Murdock
Today, Dan and Jordan sit down to chat with Huffington Post reporter Sebastian Murdock about his time covering the Sandy Hook trial in CT, and about how he was recently challenged to a debate by Owen Shroyer.
Sept. 21, 2022 - Knowledge Fight
01:06:57
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Dan and George. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Need money. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Stop it. | |
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's time to pray. | |
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| I love your room. | ||
| Knowledge Fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love you. | |
| Hey, everybody! | ||
| Welcome back to Knowledge Ride. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
| I'm Jordan. | ||
| We're a couple dudes like to sit around, worship at the altar of Selene, and talk a little bit about Alex Jones. | ||
| Oh, indeed we are, Dan. | ||
| Jordan. | ||
| Yeah, Jordan? | ||
| Quick question for you. | ||
| What's your bright spot today, buddy? | ||
| My bright spot today, Jordan, is... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You go first. | ||
| I need to think a little bit. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Take your time. | ||
| I need to mull this over. | ||
| I will tell you my bright spot, Dan. | ||
| My bright spot is there's this TV show. | ||
| Amazon, a company that I despise, spent... | ||
| More money than is ever been necessary to make this show about the Lord of the Rings, but I'll be goddamned if it's not fucking great. | ||
| I would prefer they'd spent some of that money elsewhere, but guess what? | ||
| It's a great show! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I love elves! | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I love them! | ||
| I've seen a lot of mixed opinions about this. | ||
| You know, it's weird to know... | ||
| About what's happening. | ||
| When you know what's going on in the original trilogy movies, you're like, oh, okay, that's a nerdy thing to know. | ||
| But when you're looking at your wife going like, oh, these are the men of Numenor. | ||
| All right, you don't even know what's going to come next after about 2,000. | ||
| You're like, okay, maybe I need to stop. | ||
| I'm reciting the Silmarillion to her every night whenever we watch it. | ||
| It's terrible, but it's a great show. | ||
| Well, I'm glad you're enjoying it. | ||
| I am enjoying it. | ||
| How about you, buddy? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm trying to think. | ||
| What's the problem with doing these day back-to-backs, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I guess I'm playing a fun game. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've... | |
| Valkyria Chronicles? | ||
| Valkyria Chronicles? | ||
| I guess? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a bright spot. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm enjoying that enough. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| nothing has quite scratched the itch of three houses. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That, um, that was just like right in the pocket, right in the sweet spot. | ||
| Um, I think I do enjoy a little bit of this turn-based game. | ||
| I think that vibe is something I never played growing up. | ||
| Obviously, most of my video game stuff that I played growing up were Nintendo and non-violent. | ||
| My parents were not into violence at all, so those were verboten. | ||
| And then the only way we got video games was that my grandma liked Nintendos. | ||
| And so whenever a new system would come out, she'd give us her old one. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| And so we would play Nintendo, but late. | ||
| Grandma Gamer is a great... | ||
| I didn't have one of those growing up, so that's interesting. | ||
| Yeah, it was pretty cool. | ||
| So we'd play Mario, but the big one was Donkey Kong Country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| That was sort of my model. | ||
| And I guess throughout those systems, there were... | ||
| Turn-based games and stuff just never really was in my view. | ||
| You know, I think we're older now. | ||
| We like those games that don't have as much action. | ||
| Slow it down. | ||
| Hold on! | ||
| You're riding this rhinoceros! | ||
| And it can jump? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Too fast. | ||
| Too fast. | ||
| Squares. | ||
| Give me squares. | ||
| Don't give me things that have response time necessary. | ||
| I want you to move in geometric fashion at my pace. | ||
| Quick events where you have to press a button? | ||
| No, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fuck off. | |
| No. | ||
| But yeah, it's fun. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| I'm enjoying it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| Glad to hear you're enjoying it. | ||
| Jordan, today we have a fun thing to enjoy as well, which is a little interview that we did. | ||
| Sat down with Sebastian Murdoch of the Huffington Post. | ||
| There at the trial in Connecticut. | ||
| He was for the first week. | ||
| But was there in person. | ||
| Was also there in Austin. | ||
| Indeed. | ||
| Yeah, it was just nice to have a chat about the differences between the two trials and just sort of the experience. | ||
| It was a fantastic time. | ||
| We were going to have him on when we were in Austin. | ||
| I believe I rambled about that in our intro. | ||
| Circumstances dictated. | ||
| And now it's great to finally have him on. | ||
| I'm glad that we got him here. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| So we'll get to that here in a minute. | ||
| But first, I wanted to bestow a raptor princess ship on somebody. | ||
| And that is the... | ||
| So whenever we put out the email for the buttons, apparently you laughed over the email address. | ||
| And so people didn't know if it was plural or not. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| And so the email address that was the non-plural version, there's a real danger of people sending emails to this with their addresses and such. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And Jay Lee... | ||
| Got that email address to protect people from sending their address to somewhere. | ||
| And that is something that is so cool and we appreciate it so much. | ||
| An unforeseen possibility of, like, real trouble. | ||
| So, Jay Lee, thank you so much. | ||
| You are a raptor princess. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Four stars. | ||
| Go home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant. | ||
| I'll barbecue your ass. | ||
| It's over for humanity. | ||
| You're a beautiful soul. | ||
| They're coming for your balls. | ||
| Well, I piss all over your god. | ||
| Very few people crap in the pool unless they're babies. | ||
| I piss all over the state. | ||
| Make it a practice of calling people pieces of garbage? | ||
|
unidentified
|
When they are. | |
| Come it! | ||
| As you see fit. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Yes, thank you very much. | ||
| On behalf of everybody. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Buttons coming out. | ||
| They're happening. | ||
| They're coming. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| We're surrounded by them. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| But who knows? | ||
| It'll be a while. | ||
| I appreciate everyone's patience. | ||
| We'll get there when we get there! | ||
| Yeah, but if you want to chip in, the Dreamy Creamy fundraiser, of course, is going... | ||
| Everybody who's... | ||
| A lot of people have said to chip in for shipping and what have you. | ||
| I don't want you to do that, but if you feel like chipping in, chip in for the... | ||
| You know where to go. | ||
| For a good cause. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| And now, without further ado, Jordan, let's enjoy our interview with Sebastian. | ||
| So, hey, everybody. | ||
| Very exciting. | ||
| Joining us here in the podcast. | ||
| Not in the studio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Do this digitally over Zoom. | ||
| Details. | ||
| Very excited to have this gent joining us. | ||
| We met down in Austin for the trial and wanted to have him on for that during that period of time, but our schedules were not accommodating. | ||
| So we're thrilled to welcome to the podcast writer for the Huffington Post, Sebastian Murdoch. | ||
| Thank you for joining us. | ||
| Thanks for having me on, fellas. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| I feel so self-conscious about that introduction I just did. | ||
| I think you did great. | ||
| I think you did great, dude. | ||
| I'm saying that there was quite a bit of fanfare to it. | ||
| I come from the school of the stand-up introductions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| I know. | ||
| I wanted to applaud. | ||
| I did. | ||
| As the guest, I loved it. | ||
| That's what counts. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| Sebastian, thanks for joining us, first of all. | ||
| And second, how's it going? | ||
| It's going good. | ||
| Just got back from reporting in Connecticut. | ||
| So trying to give my body a rest and get back to square one a little bit. | ||
| Yeah, you've been up there covering Alex's second trial. | ||
| It seems you're on the beat. | ||
| You're on the Huffington Post Alex Jones beat. | ||
| I am indeed on the beat. | ||
| I like doing it, though. | ||
| I mean, I like watching... | ||
| The downfall of Alex, and I like watching the Sandy Hook parents get some accountability out of him. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| It's cathartic on some level. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Those are really the only two good things, though. | ||
| The rest of it is a slog of bullshit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, I was just telling you guys, I mean, I get out of court at 5 p.m., and I'm straight to the bar at 5.15. | ||
| You know, you gotta kind of wash it away. | ||
| It's a good place to get a little work done. | ||
| And, you know, in video games sometimes, you get composure by having alcohol. | ||
| I never quite understood that. | ||
| A temporary boost to stats is what we're talking about here. | ||
| The bar is my save point, so I got to get in there. | ||
| So I was wondering if internally, like, editorially, you have, like, are there conversations that, like, You're the Alex Jones guy around these parts. | ||
| We got an Alex story. | ||
| Send Sebastian on this. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| But there is also, as you guys know, so much minutiae in the bullshit of Alex Jones and of Infowars. | ||
| So there are other times, too, where it's like Alex Jones, you know, sent sent messages to Roger Stone of his naked wife, which was a Rolling Stone article. | ||
| And so in situations like that, I sort of say, I don't want to write that. | ||
| You know, there's just so much shit, you know, like. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| I can't do everything. | ||
| It's kind of a self-care thing, too. | ||
| We'd all go insane. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I mean, unfortunately, both of you got really good at a job nobody else wants to do. | ||
| Then it's like, well, hey, guess what? | ||
| You guys did it by volunteering. | ||
| It's that curse of, like, may you get what you want. | ||
| Yeah, the monkey's paw. | ||
| Make yourself... | ||
| Indispensable. | ||
| That's a smart move. | ||
| But I do want to stress, though, it's not like you only write stories about Alex. | ||
| I was looking over your bylines. | ||
| It's all over the place, writing about all kinds of stuff. | ||
| Yeah, so I'm primarily a breaking news reporter. | ||
| So I cover the politics and the mass shootings that we have. | ||
| Karate tournaments. | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| Any Cobra Kai tournament, I can get to. | ||
| But, you know, sometimes investigative stuff, too. | ||
| But the Alex Jones thing, I've been, in one way or another, reporting on these defamation lawsuits since 2018. | ||
| So it's like, you know, a four-year build. | ||
| And now I was actually talking to attorney Mark Bankston, who I know all the wonks out there are very familiar with. | ||
| They were concerned that he might have died in Connecticut. | ||
| Yeah, he was fine. | ||
| He was good. | ||
| But, you know, it's... | ||
| Interesting to finally see... | ||
| Four years of not just reporting, but of this process. | ||
| And now we're finally not even at the first trial. | ||
| We're at the second trial now. | ||
| And then there's going to be a third on the way. | ||
| And so it sort of feels like, you know, the I don't know if I'd call it the payoff, but it's all sort of coalescing into, you know, we're getting towards the climax here. | ||
| It does feel like things are speeding up, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Once that first trial hit, now it's starting to feel like, oh, it's the next one's right around the corner. | ||
| This one's going to be a, you know, it's happening. | ||
| Well, I think that's the function of the delaying. | ||
| It's just the ball has been kicked down the road so far that a lot of this would be the kind of pace things would have gone if there hadn't been so much stalling involved. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| What's it been like being in the... | ||
| When we were in the Austin courthouse, there's a lot that you see and can kind of notice that you don't just by looking through the stream. | ||
| You've been in the courthouse the entire time, right? | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| I think... | ||
| What's very different about this trial is that in some ways it's somehow even more sobering. | ||
| And that isn't to say that the Austin trial wasn't. | ||
| But here we are in Connecticut, the state where it happened. | ||
| And there are so many plaintiffs. | ||
| So the family members are there. | ||
| And that, I think, has been incredibly impactful and continues to... | ||
| To sort of highlight, because for all the sort of laughing that we all do at Alex, and of course you guys know this, this is about what he did to these parents. | ||
| And so to have them there, it's a humbling experience, and it's also incredibly somber in a lot of ways. | ||
| I found that to be incredibly palpable in Austin. | ||
| And there was a moment just watching the stream of this Connecticut case that I thought that for sure there's no way I could have handled being there for it. | ||
| And that was when Norm Pattis was giving his opening statement. | ||
| And he... | ||
| Sort of did an act out of Alex being like, all right, I killed the kids. | ||
| I killed all the kids. | ||
| And the recognition that these parents were there and that Norm would bring himself to do that. | ||
| Not that I would freak out and jump him or something, but I don't know how I could emotionally handle seeing that. | ||
| It was hard even on just a stream. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's that level of disrespect, right? | ||
| I mean, we also see it by the fact that Alex can't even show up for these opening statements. | ||
| He's going to show up when he has to testify. | ||
| But it's, you know, and Jordan, you had talked about this a lot when we were in Austin, but the idea that, you know, there have been a lot of news media that were reporting on, well, Alex Jones says that he's sorry, he regrets. | ||
| And we know that's... | ||
| That's bullshit. | ||
| Because, again, he's not showing up to the trial at all. | ||
| He's on Infowars talking about this case, you know, calling it a kangaroo court. | ||
| And then, like you're saying, Dan, Norm Pattis gets up there and he starts doing that mimicry in front of the parents whose kids were killed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And also, Norm, saying that their argument is that they're exaggerating their trauma. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, Norm also fell asleep in the courtroom, so he was also nodding off. | ||
| When you were saying something that's different about this from the Austin, I have to imagine that just the existence of Norm Pattis makes this feel entirely different. | ||
| What's kind of surreal, though, is I still can't figure out who the worst lawyer is. | ||
| If it's going to be Tadis or Reynold. | ||
| We've had some disagreement over this ourselves. | ||
| I genuinely think that Norm, for what he's doing, is doing about as good as he could possibly do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Including falling asleep in the trial. | |
| He's doing what he's supposed to be doing. | ||
| He's taking a power nap. | ||
| He's talking shit. | ||
| He's being an asshole. | ||
| That's what he's supposed to be doing. | ||
| Yeah, Barnes made that point on Infowars even. | ||
| He was saying that this is how you deal with a rogue judge or whatever. | ||
| And that is obviously not the case, not the situation, but what Norm is doing is... | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Sling mud and hope that, you know, Daddy Alex sees it back in Austin. | ||
| Yeah, whereas Reynold seemed like, maybe I can win this thing. | ||
| It did feel... | ||
| And then what happened? | ||
| Well... | ||
| I do find it interesting because it does feel a little bit like Norm saw the first trial and Reynaud went with his halfway appeasing, halfway trying to slimeball evil into places. | ||
| And then he was like, well, that lost. | ||
| So fuck it. | ||
| I'm just going to try and sling as much shit as I can. | ||
| And maybe it'll lower the judgment. | ||
| You know, maybe people will be like, I guess they are exaggerating. | ||
| Why else? | ||
| Or maybe you can make such a problem that it. | ||
| Taints the jury. | ||
| Or they get their mistrial. | ||
| The other thing about this trial, too, is we're looking at for, I guess it would be three weeks at this point now. | ||
| So it's going to be a long trial. | ||
| The Austin one was only two. | ||
| So that gives Norm plenty of time to do something. | ||
| I feel like I heard them say that they had agreed that it might be a shorter trial than expected. | ||
| Okay, well, I think everyone would love that if that ends up being the case. | ||
| I feel like that was something that I might have heard whispered in a sidebar, but I'm not entirely sure. | ||
| I wouldn't be surprised. | ||
| I mean, if you listen to the pause testimony, just watching her constantly be like, no, I'm pretty sure we've never heard of Google Analytics. | ||
| All right, well, here's a phone call of you talking to the head of Google about Google Analytics. | ||
| I'm pretty sure we've never heard of it. | ||
| Just three days of Brittany Paws saying, oh, I don't know. | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| Which is par for the course. | ||
| Of course, that was going to be their strategy going into it. | ||
| Here is the proof that the business uses X. Do you still argue that the business doesn't use X? | ||
| That's still my position. | ||
| Yeah, and if that's the case, then it does feel like, yeah, the trial should be shorter. | ||
| There should be a lot less of that being necessary. | ||
| If you beat her over the head with how she's obviously lying often enough the first time... | ||
| Then you can use that as a shorthand as the court goes on. | ||
| You know, like, oh, well, I don't have to prove this to you. | ||
| Remember, pause. | ||
| This is that situation again. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| It seems like Alex is going to be there. | ||
| We're recording this on Monday, but it seems like he's going to be there tomorrow. | ||
| So we're putting this episode out on Wednesday. | ||
| So by the time this comes out, he may have already been there and you might have already gotten to experience. | ||
| Are you headed back? | ||
| Oh, that's right. | ||
| I mean, on the stream. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure, sure. | ||
| Yeah, so I actually came back Friday back to Brooklyn. | ||
| My wife and I actually had a little wedding party. | ||
| We got married earlier this year, but now we're doing a New York wedding. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| Hey, congratulations. | ||
| Thanks so much. | ||
| That's my bright spot of the day. | ||
| So I think we're just being cute, fellas. | ||
| I think what I'm going to try to do is go back at least the last week of the trial to be there for that. | ||
| But yeah, I was disappointed to be there and not have Alex show up, though it wasn't a huge shocker that he didn't want to come. | ||
| Yeah, I remember we were standing next to each other in Austin when Alex first entered the courtroom on the first day. | ||
| We were both quite shocked that he would be there when he didn't have to be. | ||
| So the whole court was a murmur of will he, won't he kind of drama. | ||
| But again, it's like he was in Austin. | ||
| That's his home turf, you know? | ||
| So I think Connecticut's going to be a lot tougher for him. | ||
| Yeah, and he doesn't really have that much of a bench back at Infowars. | ||
| Like, he can't take a month to go to Connecticut and expect there to be enough people to fill in. | ||
| Like, he's got Alex Stein. | ||
| Filling in for him, he said. | ||
| Does he really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, fuck that guy. | ||
| That's the kind of talent pool he's pulling from. | ||
| Alex Stein harassed one of my reporter colleagues. | ||
| She works at Vice. | ||
| Anyway, he's a scumbag. | ||
| AOC works at Vice? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Don't tell anyone, dude. | ||
| Don't tell anyone. | ||
| It seems like that's kind of that Stein guy's M.O. is harassing. | ||
| Folks. | ||
| Which, I mean, that makes them perfect for Infowars. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| I mean, that's how Owen got a job, you know, essentially yelling at people at protests. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's an unusual form of audition, but it is an effective one in certain areas. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| If you're auditioning for a troll factory, you can troll. | ||
| So when we were in Austin, we got lunch at a diner fairly near the courthouse. | ||
| And on the way, famously... | ||
| On the ground, we saw an InfoWars bumper sticker that had been used as Alex's prop to put over his mouth. | ||
| The very bumper sticker that once touched the lips of Satan himself. | ||
| We found this discarded relic, essentially. | ||
| There was a lot of talk in the community about whether or not I had taken it, and the answer was no. | ||
| No, of course not. | ||
| That was disgusting. | ||
| It belongs in a museum. | ||
| But in Connecticut, this has gone huge, gotten a lot of attention. | ||
| You found an InfoWars bumper sticker in the wild, and this caused a little bit of drama. | ||
| Yeah, so on my way to the court in the first few days, there were InfoWars stickers placed on signs right outside of the courthouse. | ||
| I think it was an intentional... | ||
| Oh, a thousand percent. | ||
| I mean, this was directly out of the courthouse. | ||
| This was not, you know, me blocks away going to a restaurant or something. | ||
| This was... | ||
| Right in front of the courthouse. | ||
| Where did you buy so many Infowars stickers? | ||
| And why did you put them up right outside the courthouse? | ||
| Infowars.com slash store. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Now I got you. | ||
| 1736 coin. | ||
| So I finally, the last day I was there, I ripped the sticker off and I took a photo of it. | ||
| It is not the most courageous thing in the world that I have ever done. | ||
| I just ripped off a sticker. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| But, you know, the other part of it, though, is that, again, these families are walking into the courthouse and they have to see that. | ||
| And that to me is just that goes back to to the disrespect that is just shown to these families across the board that continues to be shown to them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, yeah, I ripped it off and. | ||
| Tweeted about it, and then Owen Schroer got real mad about it. | ||
| See, now this is interesting, because Owen Schroer, he's kicked off Twitter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| He had his all-I-do-is-Owen handle. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Is that his really? | ||
| That was his. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| The Cuck Destroyer. | ||
| Thank God he's off Twitter, just so I never have to look at that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He couldn't get at Cuck Destroyer. | |
| He could probably have gotten at Cuck Destroyer 3, but that really doesn't sound as good. | ||
| So someone has found this tweet and shown it to Owen, or he has some kind of a ban evasion account, which is probably the case. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's not hard. | ||
| And he gets furious. | ||
| He, the Cuck Destroyer. | ||
| Cannot handle. | ||
| I rattled him. | ||
| I rattled him. | ||
| No, he's been destroyed as a cuck. | ||
| I got a flood of comments from Infowars people. | ||
| So, yeah, I went and found the video. | ||
| And it's five minutes of him whining about me taking off the sticker and because I said, fuck Infowars, which, you know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did do that, but... | |
| Credit where credit's due. | ||
| And of course, as a journalist, we try to maintain objectivity, but Infowars, it's pretty black and white. | ||
| There's no moral gray area here. | ||
| It is an objective opinion to say, fuck Infowars. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| If a media outlet is like, we can't say that, that's because they're fucking crazy, man. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So he... | ||
| He gets on InfoWars and he offers... | ||
| He doesn't offer. | ||
| He begs me to come on and debate him and then says if I... | ||
|
unidentified
|
About what? | |
| About the sticker? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It didn't exist, okay? | |
| Well, it could have been a false flag. | ||
| It was a false flag, obviously. | ||
| Yeah, it could have been a globalist setup. | ||
| I'm not going to do it, obviously. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Why not? | ||
| I'm so sorry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| Yeah, no, of course. | ||
| And, you know, that is the trap that he wants to lay bare is, oh, this coward, he won't come on and debate me. | ||
| Well, yeah, no shit I won't. | ||
| Why would I lend legitimacy to you? | ||
| And also, you're going to profit. | ||
| That video ends with an ad being played. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| And he said if I defeat him in the debate, then he'll retire. | ||
| Who's going to adjudicate that process? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sorry, what? | |
| If I defeat him in the debate? | ||
| This is wrestling shit. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I feel like you guys are all missing the greatest opportunity to say it has to be a video interview debate thing. | ||
| And then you just moon him. | ||
| I don't understand why people don't show ass more often in situations. | ||
| It's nuts that that's exactly what flashed through my mind. | ||
| Of course! | ||
| That's the only thought you could have. | ||
| It's just like, show him your ass and then move on with your day. | ||
| Now retire. | ||
| Now retire. | ||
| I won this debate, obviously. | ||
| HuffPost will let me get away with a lot, but I don't know. | ||
| I don't know how to let that one slide. | ||
| Might test the boundaries. | ||
| I am fascinated, though, by the idea of... | ||
| Challenging you to a debate, because it's so open-ended. | ||
| It's a bizarre request. | ||
| Yeah, I find that really fun. | ||
| So he challenges you to a debate, and if you win this debate... | ||
| He will retire. | ||
| It's belt versus career. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| But he didn't give you a topic. | ||
| It wasn't like specifically we're going to debate about whether or not stickers should be removed or like just a general concept. | ||
| Yeah, just the most open-ended, which again just goes back to please come on my show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, please give me attention. | ||
| And then the headline of it will be Owen Troyer destroys Huffington Post globalist reporter. | ||
| Yeah, Cuck Destroyer at it again. | ||
| I feel like Facebook. | ||
| Facial hair. | ||
| Facial hair debate, you've got him. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Because his is garbage. | ||
| I think he's covering up a weak chin. | ||
| That's what I think it is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Well, yeah, obviously. | ||
| But he also has... | ||
| I'm not sure if it's super consistent, but he often has the beard with no mustache, which is... | ||
| The most disgusting. | ||
| Well, that's offensive to my heritage. | ||
| I'm not judging it culturally, just appearance-based. | ||
| My Mennonite heritage does not appreciate it. | ||
| I mean, Dan, you look great. | ||
| You look great, though. | ||
| But I have the full mustache. | ||
| Exactly, right. | ||
| And if he shaves it, it grows back in five seconds. | ||
| It is crazy how fast this shit grows. | ||
| Well, I've just resigned myself to essentially looking like a hobo, so I've made peace with that, whereas Owen's still trying to impress people. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Oh, man, it's so fun. | ||
| I wish there was, like, I don't know. | ||
| I'm a little jealous, honestly. | ||
| Like, I think I would respond exactly the same way that you have in terms of, like, no, I'm not doing this. | ||
| This is ridiculous. | ||
| But I wish someone other than Harrison would have ever said our name. | ||
| But I think... | ||
| You guys are way more of a threat to him than I am. | ||
| I really think that's true. | ||
| You guys are just like, you've been at it for so long, you are so knowledgeable, you know, that I think they know who you are, right? | ||
| They are actively ignoring you. | ||
| I think it's also the institutional aspect that you have of the Huffington Post attachment that is like... | ||
| An irresistible thing for them to try and grab onto. | ||
| They want to go after you for the huffing post for two reasons. | ||
| One, it's a legitimate outlet, right? | ||
| So people have like, oh, this is a news thing. | ||
| And two, you have a boss who says you can't do stuff. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| So they can't come after us because we don't really have much legitimacy beyond being everybody knows we're the only people. | ||
| No one can tell you two to turn in your gun and badge. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And if I said I will debate you and then showed him my ass on screen, there's no negative consequences for me. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| The wonks would love it. | ||
| Dan would be like, that's not how we comport ourselves, but we'd get over it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would give you a finger wagging. | |
| It would be a wagging of the thing. | ||
| He's not mad. | ||
| He's disappointed. | ||
| He would be disappointed. | ||
| But I could do it and then it would be fine. | ||
| Like, you just have rules. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| And they don't, so they don't want to fight somebody who doesn't have rules the same way. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You forgot the third reason that they would be out to get him as a Huffington Post reporter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah? | |
| Yeah, and that is that 13 years ago, Ariana Huffington stole some of Alex's gold. | ||
| Yeah, he wants it back. | ||
| So what, other than Norm Pattis, other... | ||
| Some of this stuff. | ||
| What would you identify as being the differences that you feel between the Austin and the Connecticut cases? | ||
| Is there a real vibe that's different? | ||
| Yeah, I think, and I don't want to inflate his ego too much, but the thing that Mark Bankson did so well, and that whole team, quite frankly, but they brought a level of charisma and sort of dick swinging that I feel like... | ||
| This trial doesn't have. | ||
| And that's not to suggest that the plaintiff's lawyers in the Connecticut case aren't doing a great job. | ||
| I think it's also a much longer trial, so that's going to be part of it. | ||
| What I've noticed in the Connecticut trial, this first week, we've had Brittany pause on the stand for three days, so it's been kind of long and tiring. | ||
| But through that, we have gotten... | ||
| I think a lot of good new information of the internal inner workings of InfoWars. | ||
| They've got the marketing kits that InfoWars was sending out to advertisers. | ||
| We have the proof that they were using Google Analytics, the thing that Jones and InfoWars got sanctioned for minutes before the trial even began. | ||
| In terms of that, I think it's... | ||
| I want to run this number off real quick because it really did shock me. | ||
| September 24th, 2014, InfoWars SOAR gets $48,000. | ||
| The following day, they pushed the SOAR. | ||
| FBI says nobody killed at Sandy Hook Massacre. | ||
| It increases to $232,000. | ||
| That is insane. | ||
| That is proof that... | ||
| When they pushed the lie, their profits went up. | ||
| The other thing, too, is they have those snapshots of the Google Analytics from those emails, and you see that it neatly tracks also to a giant spike in traffic to the website. | ||
| It's pretty difficult to look at all those numbers and not see, like... | ||
| Well, I don't know. | ||
| You'd have to find some way to connect their sales pitch to the stories that they're actually doing on the show. | ||
| And I just think there's no way to possibly do. | ||
| Oh, wait, no. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that one. | |
| That was very obvious. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, that's not good. | ||
| One of the things I think is really, really notable, too, about this is that, like, I've seen some sales data that they've had that are like you see increases. | ||
| I believe, like, at the end of the Austin trial, Mark presented some of the texts with Tim Fruget that showed that some of the, they were, like, 800,000 in a day during this stretch. | ||
| And, like, that is definitely notable. | ||
| But what's missing from that context was that was, like, when they were doing a marathon. | ||
| Like, that was, like, they were doing a 24, 48-hour marathon, and obviously they're, like, pushing the sales and it's gonna raise stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That spike in the 2014, when they were doing the nobody, the FBI says nobody was murdered, that is just organic from the traffic that's driven from the... | ||
| Quintupled. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, you can't really get around that one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There isn't, like... | ||
| Weird external context. | ||
| What's so damning about that number, though, is that even if you wanted to, like... | ||
| It would be, if I'm on the jury and somebody's arguing that, no, we don't really pay attention to that kind of numbers, I'm mad just because that's so bad at business that you're, you know, like, if the people on the jury are thinking, oh, well, I saw my business quintuple, I'm going to do that again. | ||
| Like, it is too ridiculous to think that they would not notice a massive spike like that and not adjust their behavior accordingly. | ||
| You're absolutely right, especially because that is, they don't have morals, their one desire. | ||
| Yeah, and it strains credulity to imagine that, like, they run a warehouse and shipping business and all this, like the pills and all this, and then they don't do any kind of analysis of the... | ||
| TV show. | ||
| Right. | ||
| What strains credulity is that Brittany Paz as the corporate representative can't be certain who works there. | ||
| That beats the shit out of credulity and leaves it out back behind a fucking doc. | ||
| Speaking as the company, I don't know who has a show. | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| That strains credulity. | ||
| And if you're Harrison Smith, that's not a compliment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Because he was definitely forgotten about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Have you been, other than Owen's challenge for you, have you been monitoring the content at all? | ||
| Have you been seeing any of the coverage? | ||
| Through InfoWars? | ||
| Yeah, I've seen some of the, I watched the video on the kangaroo court bullshit, and then that was actually brought up at the trial as an example of Alex Jones not taking this seriously, which is just, I love every time This is the second time it's happened now where the judge has to see a photo of herself that InfoWars has created. | ||
| Yeah, but you could argue that he is taking it more seriously because he didn't say that she's connected to pedophilia. | ||
| Well, trial's not done yet. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| That is a bar that most people would not think that you could cross. | ||
| But yeah, I mean, now that I think about it, that is a certain level of restraint. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There is that. | ||
| That is a tangible level of restraint that we can see. | ||
| The precedent has been set. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I would almost accept that argument. | ||
| See, I'm doing better. | ||
| I'd be like, well, I think that physically, I guess that's true. | ||
| Look, I'm saying you're full of shit. | ||
| I'm not trying to get you hurt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Right. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| You should be thanking me, by frankly. | ||
| Frankly, yes. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| So you said you started covering some of this stuff at the beginning of the trial. | ||
| Is that where you're newsly... | ||
| That's not the right word. | ||
| But for the news purposes, covering Alex started... | ||
| Back in 2018? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, yes. | ||
| So before 2018, I didn't really... | ||
| I think kind of what ended up happening is I had gone... | ||
| To Parkland to cover that school shooting when it happened. | ||
| And then I was approached by Mark Bankson because Marcel Fontaine was misidentified as a Parkland shooter by Infowars and then brought a lawsuit against him, which is still pending. | ||
| And I believe his attorney saw that I had been covering Parkland, brought that story to me, and then from there... | ||
| You know, the Hesslin and Lewis case came in and then it was sort of a snowball effect. | ||
| So I just I kept covering those cases and then didn't realize just how down the rabbit hole I was going to have to go with this. | ||
| But, you know, I was glad to have done it. | ||
| I like that's how all of us wound up here. | ||
| We all were like, well, we just looked over and there was Alex Jones and then it's five years later and I don't have as much hair as I used to. | ||
| Someone has to do this. | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| Oh, fuck, it's me. | ||
| Yeah, we all jumped into the abyss and now we're more tired than ever. | ||
| But it feels good. | ||
| Sort of. | ||
| You know, when you're always falling, it's like you're not falling at all. | ||
| It makes perfect sense. | ||
| That's the way to think about it. | ||
| So you didn't have a long-standing interest in right-wing misinformation? | ||
| Maybe not necessarily misinformation, but definitely have done a lot of coverage of right-wing extremism. | ||
| I've been doxxed by the white supremacists and neo-Nazis. | ||
| So we've got that. | ||
| We know you're real. | ||
| What brought that on? | ||
| That was, man, I can't remember which time. | ||
| There was the time we helped uncover the leader of the Bull Patrol. | ||
| They call it Bull Patrol because Dylann Roof had the bull haircut. | ||
| I had one recently of an Illinois police officer who was dabbling pretty hard in some white supremacy. | ||
| Credit to HuffPost. | ||
| That actually sounds like a good Illinois play. | ||
| He was only dabbling? | ||
| That's nice. | ||
| Well, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dabbling was not the right word to use, actually. | |
| It was pretty fucking bad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So HuffPost in general, you know, it's me and several other reporters have been covering right-wing extremism for a while. | ||
| Andy Campbell and Chris Mathias were in Charlottesville, you know, with the neo-Nazis march. | ||
| I went to Charleston, South Carolina. | ||
| When Dylann Roof shot up the church. | ||
| You might have run into Jakari Jackson when he was down there. | ||
| Possibly. | ||
| That was a while ago. | ||
| Alex Jones just seemed like the next logical step. | ||
| He is very much within that realm and stirring the pot as much as possible. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| How do you deal with that? | ||
| You do this coverage of these extremists within organizations, or the Bull Patrol has created their own organization, essentially. | ||
| And you do coverage of it, and that's important. | ||
| It's newsworthy. | ||
| People should know about these things. | ||
| But then the consequence of it comes with this attention being turned back on you, and it's... | ||
| The threats and the personal information being... | ||
| Do you find yourself needing to have security measures? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, we do have a good security team. | ||
| I haven't been docked in a while, and fucking knock on wood, you guys. | ||
| Our team does a good job of getting our information off. | ||
| There are definitely measures that you can take. | ||
| It's not like a free for every man for himself when this happens. | ||
| Another time, my parents actually got dogs, but they're MAGA Republicans, so jokes on them. | ||
| Oh, they got doxxed and people just sent cookies. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They were like, your son's a liberal fucking reporter. | |
| And they were like, yeah, I know. | ||
| I always think about if you have personal information, like your address in the hands of these nefarious, dangerous weirdos, do you move? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I feel like I would move, right? | |
| I don't know. | ||
| It depends on the level of harassment. | ||
| And I actually, whatever I've gone through really pales in comparison to a lot of other journalists, particularly if you're a female journalist. | ||
| Yeah, I was going to say, you have a penis, so you're off to a good start as far as harassment goes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so most of the time, you know, if they're giving me threats or whatever, I can I can kind of ignore it or, you know, not not worry about it as much. | |
| But I think if you're a female in that space and they've really got an axe to grind and those those are the jobs. | ||
| Yeah, I guess I'm just sort of thinking about this because I haven't really thought about it too much. | ||
| It's always been the expectation that something is around the corner of some kind of angry info warrior thing. | ||
| Just doesn't happen. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| We never get any of it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We've barely been contacted, like... | ||
| Twice? | ||
| Three times maybe? | ||
| Jordan sounds so disappointed. | ||
| I mean, it's not disappointing. | ||
| It's just so weird. | ||
| I think when you were tweeting about the trial, you got a bit of... | ||
| No, not even then. | ||
| No, people didn't... | ||
| I think it's just because we're not on social media, really. | ||
| It could be, but I mean... | ||
| I think that's a big part of it. | ||
| See, the thing is, when I was on Twitter, people didn't come after me. | ||
| They went after people who were like... | ||
| Tertiary. | ||
| You know, they were people who were around. | ||
| And so if they said something similar to me, then they would go after somebody with like 30 followers or something. | ||
| But nobody spoke to me at all. | ||
| It was disconcerting. | ||
| Oh, you're scary. | ||
| You are scary, dude. | ||
| Jordan, Jordan, just a fucking Tasmanian devil. | ||
| I wouldn't have recommended it. | ||
| I wasn't saying that it's a good idea. | ||
| I'm just surprised nobody gave it a shot. | ||
| You seem unpredictable. | ||
| You yell a lot. | ||
| Yeah, you're too good at it. | ||
| There's pictures of you from in Austin with your pits. | ||
| They're like, his heart must be going full speed. | ||
| He's ready to go at any moment. | ||
| Wait, Jordan, didn't you also get admonished by the bailiff or something when we were in Austin? | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| I got a couple, but that wasn't really for anything. | ||
| That was just because you were about to yell at us. | ||
| I was about to be a problem. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I got preemptively warned quite well. | |
| Which was good, because then I got to go back to the trial. | ||
| It also taught us an important lesson, and that is that you respect bailiffs more than me. | ||
| Because I have already told you not to do that. | ||
| Not listen to my advice. | ||
| They have guns. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| That's the difference. | ||
| So do you plan to go to the Posner case as well? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Because that's really the end chapter on this in a lot of ways. | ||
| And that's not to say that things aren't done. | ||
| And Lenny Posner and Veronique, they are the ones who really... | ||
| They were the ones who really started going after Alex first for the lies that he was spread. | ||
| Lenny got Alex's videos taken down off YouTube. | ||
| And so that is going to be really interesting to see. | ||
| And I think it's going to be that trial itself, even though it'll be the last one, I think there's going to be so many new stories and narrative and facts that come out in that case. | ||
| And it's going to be really worth paying attention to. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| That is something, like, to go back to, sorry to take the conversation a step back, but to go back to something you said earlier about how in the Texas trial, you know, Mark and company brought a certain big swinging dick energy to the proceedings. | ||
| The threatening gummy bear or gummy worm aura of Bill alone. | ||
| Bill's got that radiating off of him. | ||
| But... | ||
| In this trial, I felt like there's much more of an almost nerdy, granular element. | ||
| So when you compare the lawyers, I do think that the Connecticut lawyers are doing a really good job getting into the very minor kind of detail stuff. | ||
| Have you noticed that kind of change as well? | ||
| Well, Norm fell asleep. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Never mind. | ||
| Question retracted. | ||
| Well, I will say, but to your point, Jordan, I will say that, and I keep saying this, but there's a lot more trial to come and there's going to be more testimony. | ||
| The testimony of Bill Aldenberg, the FBI agent, I mean, that was really difficult to watch. | ||
| And he's essentially hyperventilating on the stand because he's... | ||
| Not only did he have to relive the horror of what he saw that day, but as he sat in trial, he had to... | ||
| Say it in front of the family members. | ||
| And I think that's what was breaking his heart even more. | ||
| He said to them at one point, he pointed to the family and he said, I'm so sorry that I have to do this, that I have to talk about this. | ||
| My heart breaks. | ||
| And I think those, again, are the sobering reminders of the impact that this has had. | ||
| You know, on these people and the trauma that continues to exist. | ||
| And the fact that Alex and company still won't let up, you know, and still want to make a mockery of this just shows that they don't care. | ||
| They don't care at all. | ||
| And I can't wrap my mind around that because, you know, I'm a journalist. | ||
| I'm a human being first. | ||
| And there is a real line in the sand when you're attacking the parents of dead kids. | ||
| You know, you're either on the right side of this or you're fucking dead wrong. | ||
| Yeah, not much gray there. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It speaks, too, to the extent of what kind of shit we're dealing with. | ||
| In your line of work, especially, you rattled off a list of atrocities, and you were there. | ||
| And it's easy to get desensitized to a lot of that. | ||
| But at the end of the day, this is so fucking bad, you cannot get desensitized to it. | ||
| I don't know how they can. | ||
| You know? | ||
| That's the crazy thing. | ||
| Well, it's not... | ||
| I think it's because to become desensitized, you have to have a starting point where you can... | ||
| I mean, you have to have a baseline of empathy to begin with, and I just don't think that exists for them. | ||
| No, I think from my experience of watching this show and looking at this world for so long, it's a cynicism, and it's just a baseline of... | ||
| I was like, whatever works. | ||
| And it's, yeah, it's completely disconnected from what you need to get to become desensitized. | ||
| And that cynicism goes back to Owen Shorter trying to get me onto debate, because at the end of the day, it's still a way that he gets a profit off this trial. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| How are you handling the, you know, as we've just kind of talked about, that kind of disconnect where... | ||
| You see Bill Aldenberg on the stand, you see the families there, and then at the same time... | ||
| Minutes apart, you see Norm Pattis making what amounts to the legal version of dropping his pants and saying the N-word as an argument. | ||
| Yeah, that's such a good point, Jordan. | ||
| Because I think, and I know you guys can relate to this, you have to be able to do both, right? | ||
| I mean, you take it seriously and let it be somber when it is, but we're also allowed to point and laugh at the clown on stage, right? | ||
| So, you know, I think both things can kind of work in tandem, but it is sort of emotional whiplash sometimes, and, you know, at the end of the day, I'm still going back to have a beer to just sort of, like, process, you know, what the hell did I just watch? | ||
| Yeah, it's natural to, like, recognize the clownishness, but, like, it's still, it's so weird to have, but I guess it's kind of what we swim in all the time, that it's like, this is funny. | ||
| But it also exists as a... | ||
| It's painful and it sucks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It's not dark humor. | ||
| That's not what it is. | ||
| No, it's like we live at the demarcation point where reality and surreality are crashing together. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| What's funny is that surreality is trying to come into the real world. | ||
| They're trying to bring it through this fictional doorway and we're like, that's a wall! | ||
| That's all it is! | ||
| You're not bringing anything through! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Kool-Aid man. | |
| But there you go. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| That's the only thing I could think of. | ||
| Kool-Aid man's got to come through that wall. | ||
| It feels like Norm is trying to summon the Kool-Aid man. | ||
| Something that I thought of when you were talking about the Bill Aldenberg's testimony, to go back to that for a second, one of the things I thought was really kind of horrifying about that that I didn't even really think of was that part of... | ||
| His experience with the entire aftermath is that he was accused of being an actor who was also one of the parents. | ||
| Parent David Wheeler. | ||
| His experience of the denial of his experience also was an element of it for him was Mr. Wheeler's pain. | ||
| It's like almost an appendage to an already... | ||
| It's not his fault, but it would be very difficult to not feel like you were a part of what was being done to this other person. | ||
| I felt like that was something he was talking about on the stand. | ||
| That was horrifying. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That, to me, I think, was the most heartbreaking. | ||
| At one point, he said something to the effect of... | ||
| I wish I had done something differently. | ||
| He said that he took some responsibility. | ||
| And that is so heartbreaking because we all know there's nothing he could have done. | ||
| There's nothing differently he could have done that would have stopped these people from still trying to make this connection and still throwing his life and everyone else's life into chaos and turmoil. | ||
| There's nothing he could have done and yet he still has I think it's got to be rooted in that overactive empathy thing, too. | ||
| You just want to think of some way that you could have helped. | ||
| But the cynicism is too great on the other side. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| Yeah, it is weird because it is a little bit like... | ||
| Hearing some people describing what they could have done better to stop a hurricane, and it's like, well, that hurricane was coming. | ||
| You were just in the way. | ||
| More sandbags might have had the water get in somewhere else. | ||
| It might have diverted water somewhere, but damage was going to be done. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| That's exactly right. | ||
| It sucks that this is a force of nature in our minds. | ||
| Well, I mean, bullshit artists are a force of nature. | ||
| I don't know if it's that the lying bullshit artists are the force of nature so much as it is these types of panics are a force of nature. | ||
| How many people got caught up in the satanic panic and all of a sudden their lives are fucking destroyed over imaginary bullshit? | ||
| This is an arm of social ungulation that's so fucking weird that it is kind of a force of nature. | ||
| But the hope is that with these trials, that'll help to quell the storm. | ||
| Let's get it from a hurricane to a drizzle. | ||
| Right, which is so fascinating in terms of the trial because Norm keeps bringing up that thing that Mehdi said in the opening statement of, you know, we need to shut them down. | ||
| This needs to stop, you know, that kind of thing. | ||
| And if the defense lawyer says that, you do feel like, oh, there's something prejudicial about it, right? | ||
| But that's just being honest about what needs to be done to handle this. | ||
| Because we can't, you know, if it was a criminal trial, we'd say put him in jail forever. | ||
| You know, that kind of thing. | ||
| And to that point, too, it's like they're saying that we have to shut them down to end this because the proof is that they're still trying to profit off of it. | ||
| You know, now it's about the trial and the kangaroo court and blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And so, yeah, I mean, the only way they're going to learn is if you take their money away. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Yeah, the ultimate lesson, I think, in so much is just they don't learn. | ||
| They won't learn. | ||
| They can't learn. | ||
| They don't want to. | ||
| And yeah, an argument is pretty easy to make that a fitting punishment just has to be like, you can do a podcast. | ||
| That's what you can do. | ||
| Honestly, it's almost like, listen. | ||
| I don't want any punishment other than that you just can't talk on the air anymore. | ||
| You can do whatever you want with the rest of your life. | ||
| You just can't bother people. | ||
| Like, it is a little bit like you just can't be that guy anymore. | ||
| Yeah, I can think of some other punishments, but I'll keep it to myself for now. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| Well, listen, hey, you know me. | ||
| I'm a real restraint guy. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| I found it interesting that Norm, in his introduction, was kind of conceding the fact that they're going to prove that Alex is a liar. | ||
| And to me, I think that one of the things you would think of as an appropriate punishment is really recognizing that this person is full of shit in a very public space. | ||
| But then I realized, no, they'll concede that. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| Sucks. | ||
| Norm also, so a couple, you know, some color from the trial. | ||
| Norm had a sidekick with him who, like another lawyer, you know, standing helping next to him who had a slightly shorter ponytail than Norm. | ||
| So it felt like... | ||
| It felt like a Padawan. | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was so good. | |
| When you get fired to Padas Law, they cut that off. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| All their legal knowledge drains out the back of their head. | ||
| When Manny chops Padas in half with a lightsaber, things are going to get real interesting. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| There was a stretch of time that Padas had a weird quarantine beard going, too. | ||
| Wondering if he was going to show up with that giant beard. | ||
| I'm glad he didn't. | ||
| That guy sucks. | ||
| What a weirdo. | ||
| Every time he walks around, everything about him is wrong. | ||
| I don't like necessarily, but I think it maybe is inevitable, that so much of the conversation about the trial, whether it's with you here or even on our show when we're just talking about it, it focuses around Norm. | ||
| It's hard for it not to be. | ||
| He's such a... | ||
| And he's been a picture in Alex's world for a long time now. | ||
| Yeah, he was there when Alex put out a bounty on Chris Meddy. | ||
| He was in studio while Alex was drunkenly screaming about that. | ||
| Yeah, his antics are like, he's a dancing monkey in the courtroom, and every now and again, he just starts banging his cymbals together, and you can't not look at the monkey banging his cymbals together. | ||
| Like, what are you doing, monkey? | ||
| Stop it! | ||
| How did you learn this? | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| Who trained you? | ||
| Where is your master? | ||
| He'll be there tomorrow. | ||
| I'm fascinated to imagine how cross-examination is going to go, or just Norm, Asking Alex questions. | ||
| I can't imagine. | ||
| It's going to be a mess. | ||
| It's going to be exhausting. | ||
| I've already started my objections. | ||
| I'm just going to say objection for now to begin with. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| I can't imagine him being allowed to get many more than two or three questions through to Alex before they're like, we're just shutting this down. | ||
| I think Norm's going to have a tough time as the weeks go on. | ||
| He's already nodding off in the courtroom. | ||
| There was a quick recess, and so he was, like, tweeting just, like, other shit. | ||
| He tweeted Mike Cernovich. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| About the migrants being sent to Martha's Vineyard. | ||
| It's like, head in the game, Norm. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| You're busy right now, Norm. | ||
| When you're the defense lawyer, you want to project an air of confidence, okay? | ||
| He is doing that. | ||
| A little bit of nonchalance goes a long way in kind of suggesting that you've got a tight hand on this ship, you know? | ||
| You know, I actually didn't. | ||
| Think about it that way. | ||
| You might have a point there. | ||
| He's trying to neg the court. | ||
| Falling asleep is basically just peacocking. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| I don't want to date you anyway. | ||
| Withhold approval and then it will come to you. | ||
| I don't want a low judgment at all. | ||
| I'm so cool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm chill. | |
| I dare you guys to give a high judgment. | ||
| You don't have the guts! | ||
| The first trial, the strategy was red pill the jury. | ||
| Second strategy, reusing the game. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| So we should probably wrap this up before too long. | ||
| We're coming in close to an hour here. | ||
| I figure before we do, though, is there anything else on your mind that you think is important from your experience? | ||
| Maybe... | ||
| It's either trial that you want to bring to the forefront. | ||
| I've said it before, but I think it's just worth always repeating that this is about the Sandy Hook families. | ||
| This is about the parents who lost their children. | ||
| This is about the mothers and sons who lost their parents. | ||
| This is about the teachers who gave their lives protecting these kids. | ||
| It fucking sucks. | ||
| And I think all that we can do is to make things a little bit harder for people like Alex Jones while also doing our best to also walk with kindness. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| If there's one thing that this has taught me, it's... | ||
| I mean, the parents are just so courageous. | ||
| They're in courtroom every day. | ||
| Alex is hiding in Texas. | ||
| And they're not even, on days they're not testifying. | ||
| They're showing up to the courtroom. | ||
| And that is just like, that level of courage is something that I will never know. | ||
| I hope to never have to know. | ||
| And so, you know, I just, I have all the love and all the respect in the world for those people. | ||
| Definitely. | ||
| That's all I gotta say. | ||
| That's definitely something that even though we, you know, we bring attention to that, it can never be said enough. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| One thing actually that brings to my mind, I wanted to bring this up because I forgot to ask you about this, but there was on our subreddit, our fan subreddit. | ||
| Mark did post a proof of life picture. | ||
| Were you around when there was a confrontation? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Why this jogged into my mind was because you're talking about the courage of showing up, these families showing up every day at court. | ||
| There is the emotional courage of being there in this really difficult, horrific setting. | ||
| And then there is also just the real... | ||
| Like, literal, physical courage of the risk of being accosted by somebody like this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, what happened? | ||
| I'm curious. | ||
| So, it was related to me peeling the cigarette off. | ||
| I didn't realize so many people were going to get fucking triggered by me undefacing a property. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| So, I am not 100% sure, but the running theory is that it was Corey Sklenka, who was Wolfgang Halbig's driver in Connecticut, and that he might have just driven up there to see something. | ||
| So, I ripped the sticker down. | ||
| Mark is next to me. | ||
| I take a photo of it, and he's smoking a cigarette, and very aggressively, he tells me to move on. | ||
| He tells both of us, keep walking, move on. | ||
| Oh, so this was your fault? | ||
| Well, yeah. | ||
| So then as we were walking into the courthouse, the guy is walking in behind us and starts saying some things to Mark and I believe says to Mark, fuck you, bitch. | ||
| At that point, I sort of loudly said in front of the bailiffs that I said, you know, looks like somebody's grumpy this morning. | ||
| But then he kind of took off. | ||
| We let... | ||
| You know, they let security know. | ||
| He kind of ran away, I guess. | ||
| I like the pterodactyl lamp in the Flintstones in this scenario. | ||
| Somebody's grumpy. | ||
| Just try to keep it light, you know. | ||
| Yeah, my last words before I get my ass beat. | ||
| Somebody's grumpy. | ||
| My nose gets broken. | ||
| I do appreciate Mark just has that way of bringing it out of people. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Mark can really get under people's skin and make them want to take a swing at them. | ||
| But to be fair, it seems like the inciting incident was the sticker. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| This wasn't even about Mark. | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| You're lucky you survived, quite frankly. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| Who cares? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That is the other way that we get through the event. | ||
| I mean, in terms of your all's experience, yeah, it is a who cares, but at the same time, if it is in fact the case that this was this guy who was a Wolfgang Halbig associate, and we're hearing on the stand that Wolfgang is reaching out to these Infowars people and essentially harassing them now as the trial is going on, there is a reality to this that's still... | ||
| I don't want to say luckily it was directed at you, but like, you know, the alternative is worse. | ||
| Yeah, it was directed at Mark 2, and I think between the two of us, we would have been fine. | ||
| I meant the plural you. | ||
| You too. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| As opposed to like a family member or something. | ||
| What's crazy for Halbig is that this is a man who's lived most of his life believing that the TV is talking to him to all of a sudden have Norm look at the TV on trial and be like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wolfgang, if you're listening to me right now, what kind of insane world... | |
| Please stop. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| And that's a weird thing for Norm to have done. | ||
| Yes, that is a fucked up thing for him to have done. | ||
| I wonder if it does come across as better to be like, I'm not going to directly communicate with him. | ||
| I'm just going to say this through the medium of the stream. | ||
| Seems like you should take care of that somehow. | ||
| It seems private. | ||
| That day, Wolfgang, after the Austin trial, he's left me a couple voicemails, which is just the rambling, you know, sad bullshit that you would expect it to be. | ||
| But... | ||
| One of the days of the trial, I get an email from Wolfgang. | ||
| Not to me directly. | ||
| Wolfgang just sends it to FBI agents. | ||
| Everybody. | ||
| Everybody, yeah. | ||
| So I'm on his newsletter, you know, his mailing list. | ||
| Oh, that's fun. | ||
| And the email... | ||
| You couldn't click unsubscribe for that one? | ||
| Well, I keep an eye on it. | ||
| I like keeping an eye on it. | ||
| Does he use MailChimp? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a good segue into... | ||
| No, but the email was about how the Connecticut governor lied to him about Sandy Hook. | ||
| He's still doing this, you know? | ||
| He's still doing this, even the day of testimony in the second defamation trial. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Even after he has lost these suits, you know? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, and his family, you know? | ||
| Like, no one wants anything to do with him. | ||
| He does have the ultimate freedom of literally having nothing left to lose. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, you're pot committed. | ||
| But that's also, that is, going back to what we're saying, that is the danger, right? | ||
| When you have nothing left to lose, you know? | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well... | |
| Fingers crossed he finds something that he doesn't want to lose, I guess. | ||
| That's not a great summation. | ||
| Is this how we're going to end it? | ||
| Click. | ||
| Yeah, bye. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| I guess I just started to get into a negative thought spiral about like... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe get a hobby. | ||
| I was thinking may the wolf choke on his flesh, but there are other opinions. | ||
| That's a good toast. | ||
| Maybe he'll do woodworking. | ||
| Or maybe he'll be eaten by a wolf. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Up to you. | ||
| Either one sounds fine. | ||
| Sebastian, thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| This has been a delight. | ||
| It was really great meeting you down in Austin. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I love you boys and just have all the fucking respect in the world for what you guys do. | ||
| And we definitely appreciate your coverage of the trial. | ||
| Yes, it is great to have more voices saying put the parents and families and all that at the forefront of everybody's mind. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Great deal of respect to you for that. | ||
| Thank you so much, man. | ||
| There's a slight chance I might come down to Austin again. | ||
| No, I don't think I'm going to do it. | ||
| I admire you being able to go to these trials, but that was too exhausting for me. | ||
| We'll see you in Austin. | ||
| Well, we'll talk about it. | ||
| I'm going to end up in fucking Austin. | ||
| Y 'all should come to Austin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, shut up! | |
| No, you just want us to fucking suffer with you. | ||
| You need nobody at the bar! | ||
| That is exactly what I want. | ||
| Those are exactly my intentions. | ||
| Yeah, that makes sense. | ||
| Alright, well, I'll see you boys soon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Alright. | |
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a huge fan. | |
| I love your work. |
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