Today, Dan and Jordan welcome back to the show Elizabeth Williamson. The trio chats about the goings-on in the CT trial, including Alex's testimony, Alex's press conferences, and the importance of the 2014 Super Bowl.
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Knowledge Fight. | |
| I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. | ||
| Knowledge Fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dan and George. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Need money. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
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Stop it. | |
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's time to pray. | |
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
| Hello, Alex. | ||
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your room. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Knowledgefight.com. | ||
|
unidentified
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I love you. | |
| Hey, everybody. | ||
| Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
| 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! | ||
| Dan! | ||
| Quick question for you, buddy. | ||
| What's your bright spot today? | ||
| My bright spot today, I feel weird about this, but it is I have been trying to find entertainment to watch while I make the buttons and get the buttons out and everything. | ||
| And I've watched a few online YouTube videos that are They're basically... | ||
| It's people explaining... | ||
| Hoax games, like interactive alternative reality games. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I kind of see what you're saying. | ||
| Like people who put YouTube videos up that have clues and you got to crack the clues. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| You know, but they're like used as like narrative storytelling. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Adult internet scavenger hunt stories. | ||
| But sometimes they have their like horror stories. | ||
|
unidentified
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Sure. | |
| Of course. | ||
| Naturally. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I would never want to do one of these things or be involved in it or like be one of the people trying to crack the puzzle. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| But man, listening to people just basically pretend that an art project is real. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Kind of fun. | ||
| I enjoy it. | ||
| Is it the unfettered willingness to commit to this world? | ||
| Or are you just like, well, this is fun. | ||
| I like any enthusiasm for something. | ||
| Renaissance fairs. | ||
| Just jump in. | ||
| What about you? | ||
| My bright spot is I'll tell you this. | ||
| Remember how ABC and HBO and Warner and all that stuff, there's all that merger stuff, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So ABC owns the challenge now. | ||
| The real world road road challenge. | ||
| The real world, well, not called that anymore. | ||
| ABC owns it, you know? | ||
| So they put out a season and it was filled with like ABC reality stars, you know, those types of people. | ||
| And they were blah. | ||
| You know, but but then my my partner found a season from the old days that we hadn't watched before. | ||
| Man! | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You need some kind of dirtbag element to that show. | ||
| You need dirtbags. | ||
| You do! | ||
| I don't want to be the guy who says dirtbag about people. | ||
| No, that's the only reason that any of those things were watchable at all. | ||
| No, it's not a competition show. | ||
| It's a dirtbag competition. | ||
| And it's so unethical because it's just like give them all tons of alcohol and hope the dirtbag goes crazy. | ||
| It's wrong. | ||
| It is fundamentally unethical. | ||
| But at the same time, like... | ||
| If your continuum is, well, my continuum is the Great British Bake Off and the Challenge. | ||
| Like any, all other reality competition shows fall in between those two poles. | ||
| That Scottish lady was a dirtbag on season two of the Great British Bake Off. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Just so long as you don't say that about Liam. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Don't you dare! | ||
| Don't you dare! | ||
| Paul Hollywood is a dirtbag. | ||
| He's a dirtbag for sure. | ||
| Someone who is not a dirtbag is... | ||
| What a great transition. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Our guest joining us, returning to the podcast. | ||
| We're very excited to have her along to give some insight into things on the ground at the Alex Jones trial in Connecticut. | ||
| Elizabeth Williams, thank you so much for joining us again. | ||
| It's William's son, and thank you for not calling me. | ||
| Oh my god! | ||
| Damn it! | ||
| We're gonna edit that out. | ||
| We're gonna edit that out. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| He dropped a syllable. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It wasn't purposeful. | |
| Legitimately, we've known you for years. | ||
| You know what happened there? | ||
| I was in my head arguing about whether or not I was going to say of the New York Times or bring that up later and I dropped the sun. | ||
| I can't believe it. | ||
| You would have said of the New York Times sun. | ||
| Yes, probably. | ||
| I'd have to put it somewhere. | ||
| That does sound right. | ||
| Well, please accept my apologies and what is your bright spot? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, here I was thinking. | |
| So, okay, my bright spot, because I've been all day at the Alex Jones damages trial, at the end of the day, A, in a truly bright spot, the sun came out after raining all day at the end of our day in court, and... | ||
| Someone convinced Alex Jones that there was a security threat, and so they prevented him from having a press conference after his meltdown in court. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Thank God. | ||
| Somebody trolled him into not being an asshole. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And I have a theory. | ||
| I know I shouldn't, you know, because we're talking about conspiracy theories, I know I shouldn't do this. | ||
| But I did hear two bailiffs talking at the end of the hall after he left. | ||
| And they said, well, something like that worked. | ||
| And something like, he can't shut his mouth. | ||
| There's a number of things that we experienced here. | ||
| We're recording this on Thursday. | ||
| There's a number of things that you could probably be like, well, that worked. | ||
| That worked. | ||
| It was a day of that worked. | ||
| We were probably just talking about maybe their phone or something like that. | ||
| But it was, you know, right after he got onto the elevator and he kept saying, they're telling me it's a security issue. | ||
| I think the only conclusion we can take from this is that the bailiffs are under the employ of Klaus Schwab. | ||
| It does make sense. | ||
| They are talking about the trial as a whole, considering they are part of the globalist conspiracy, which we have to assume at this point. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's been introduced in court. | |
| Even more funny is that he would believe that because when you went outside the courthouse, there was maybe one guy with a microphone, a couple of reputable news trucks. | ||
| And really no one else. | ||
| Like a single tumbleweed going across the road. | ||
| What you're not accounting for is how many roofs were there around there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, that's true. | |
| People always discount rooftop men. | ||
| That's an issue. | ||
| Plus, if you are a disreputable assassin, let's say, why wouldn't you... | ||
| Well, I was trying to juxtapose it with a reputable news organization's truck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Naturally, naturally. | |
| No, no, I understand. | ||
| You'd hide. | ||
| You'd camouflage. | ||
| But also, I think it makes total sense for Alex to believe that because it plays into his importance. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You could trick him into anything. | ||
| Yeah, I don't think anyone, if people couldn't be bothered to turn up to support him in court, I'm not sure they could be bothered to turn up to do whatever he was afraid they might do, so. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Actually, that brings up a question that I was meaning to ask you, Elizabeth, not Dan. | ||
| I was wondering about those press conferences because I like not to poison the answer, but I find them really, really gross and disgusting. | ||
| So how do you feel about the fact that like no matter what you do, like you could choose not to do one of those? | ||
| But there will be other news organizations there, right? | ||
| No matter what you do. | ||
| So you might as well be there. | ||
| But how do you feel about the actual event that happens? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Filthy. | |
| Filthy. | ||
| That's a good answer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| No, I I actually had this very conversation with another journalist in the elevator deciding not to do one of his press conferences, because the other thing. | ||
| He did one yesterday where he did it at the lunch break, but he was late showing up. | ||
| And so by the time he started talking, it was almost time for court to begin again. | ||
| And so there you're really faced with, you know, the thing that you're absolutely talking about, Jordan, which is... | ||
| Do I go into the courtroom and listen to the Sandy Hook families tell their story, or do I sit here outside, stand here, and just listen to this word salad of, you know, repetition that he, you know, I mean, we've all heard it before thousands of times. | ||
| You know, do we just listen to Alex Jones gloviate and, you know, deliver what he usually delivers? | ||
| Or do you go inside and actually, you know, rejoin the real world? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So one of the things that I think is really tough about that choice that Alex put everyone in by showing up late and having that press conference is that the press conference itself is a disrespect to what's going on in the court. | ||
| And then it's forcing people to make this choice between like... | ||
| Watching him disrespect the court or go into the court. | ||
| I know that we were watching it and the law and crime stream was showing the Alex outside and I'm like, we got a minute left. | ||
| What are they going to do? | ||
| Are they going to cut away from him to go inside? | ||
| Yeah, that's their dilemma, right? | ||
| Because typically it's just one guy. | ||
| Thanks, Dan, because I was going to make that point too before room service came, of course. | ||
| And that's that, you know, this whole thing is, this is, as Neil Heslund put it in Austin at the trial he attended, it is an act of cowardice that Alex Jones does not show up in the courtroom for his own trial unless he is compelled to because he has to testify. | ||
| So this trial has been going on now for nearly two weeks, and this is the first day he has shown up. | ||
| He's been in town for a couple of days, and he's had these press conferences out in front. | ||
| And even when he's not in town, he's watching every day on his show, and he's maligning the process, the judge, the proceedings, and setting up a website, as they said in court today, Kangaroo Court, where his viewers can watch and donate to his legal defense. | ||
| So, you know, it just is, you know, after the last trial, One of the jurors, it was shared with me, said that his failure to turn up and the fact that he was tearing apart the entire process on his show really pissed off the jurors because it said that he has utter contempt for The judicial process in this country. | ||
| And that's really what got him where he is today, right? | ||
| It makes such a compelling case for why you got defaulted. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It is good to get that confirmation from you just because it's like, while I was watching the trial in Austin, sitting in the courtroom, looking at the jurors, you know, kind of. | ||
| Getting an idea of how it is they were feeling. | ||
| They had good poker faces. | ||
| Oh, totally. | ||
| But there were some of those moments, like the one that I'll always remember is the guy who was writing notes for the first hour or two of Alex's testimony, just putting his notepad down. | ||
| Like, you know what? | ||
| There's no reason to keep doing this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I get it. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. | ||
| But it's nice to know that that is disrespectful behavior that they do account for, because there is a part of me that's like, I don't know if they would care about that so much. | ||
| Think about it, too, that these are people who are taking time out of their lives to do a civic duty. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| And it probably would be an affront to the sacrifice that they're making. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I could be at work today. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| Rather than collecting my, you know, per diem as a jerk. | ||
| Yeah, no, and as you recall... | ||
| In Austin, he was maligning the jury themselves, right? | ||
| He was calling them, you know, basically dense. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| They're blue-collar folk. | ||
| They don't know anything. | ||
| They're blue-collar folk who love me. | ||
| That's what I'm going to insult them with. | ||
| I will say one fun thing about his press conferences out front was I was actually on the phone with you, Elizabeth, and we were discussing something. | ||
| I think it was something about the story about his... | ||
| I saw you walk behind him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look out! | |
| There she is! | ||
| That was kind of fun. | ||
| Yes, great bankruptcy content. | ||
| That was what I was in search of. | ||
| You got a little bit, I think, right? | ||
| I mean, he did touch on that. | ||
| You did get a little bit of the bankruptcy content. | ||
| Yes, he recast what was really a pretty devastating hearing for him earlier this week. | ||
| No, that's exactly what we wanted. | ||
| We wanted a bankruptcy judge in Texas to remove my lawyer and my chief restructuring officer because that means we'll get additional oversight over free speech systems that we just so dearly need and by someone who is completely unaffiliated, unlike the lawyer and the chief restructuring officer who we removed. | ||
| Someone who is completely unrelated to free speech systems. | ||
| Imagine that. | ||
| He's got to be thrilled. | ||
| It's exactly what he wanted for a bankruptcy judge to say something along the lines of, I hope I never have to do something like this in my career again. | ||
| Right before they dropped the gallows. | ||
| Like, what are you fucking talking about? | ||
| I hope I never have. | ||
| You're a bankruptcy court judge. | ||
| Get the fuck out of here. | ||
| It was. | ||
| It was like... | ||
| Sorrow, not anger. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's the stage beyond your parents being disappointed, not angry. | ||
| Sorrow, not anger. | ||
| I am so disappointed at this bankruptcy filing. | ||
| I would say maybe there is something to this for free speech system is because based on Paz and Alex's testimony... | ||
| I don't know if anybody knows how that business actually works or where money comes from or how money works. | ||
| You're being so naive. | ||
| So it'll be nice for somebody to finally know what's actually going on. | ||
| There's such a thing as strategic unawareness that might be... | ||
| Plausible deniability? | ||
| What kind of two words are those to put next to each other? | ||
| That's confusing. | ||
| Absurd. | ||
| But the thing that I also liked, another sort of meta aspect of this whole thing is, so... | ||
| One of the things that the bankruptcy judge raised as a lack of candor, a lack of transparency, and a questionable business expense or personal expense, actually, by Jones was the $80,000 dollars that he pulled out of the company to finance his trip here in Connecticut, where he has a cadre of bodyguards. | ||
| He said in court today that he took Yeah. | ||
| to Waterbury, Connecticut, and rolls up in a fleet of SUVs and is staying at a pretty posh Airbnb a short distance from the courthouse. | ||
| So it doesn't seem like bankrupt behavior. | ||
| Wasn't the $80,000 just for security? | ||
| Yeah, that's what the judge said. | ||
| In the bankruptcy case. | ||
| I wouldn't be too surprised if they took out even more for the trip. | ||
| Honestly. | ||
| His nitpicking response about the jet was so much what Alex is to me. | ||
| At the same time as he's supposed to be, like, defending himself, he can't help but be like, oh, this is the first time we ever chartered a jet. | ||
| You know, we've chartered planes before, but this is a jet, you know? | ||
| And you're like, what are you fucking doing? | ||
| You insane madman. | ||
| And he said that he had never chartered jets before 2018 when they sued him. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| So, more security problems. | ||
| In other words, I don't want to be hassled in an airport. | ||
| They don't have security in airports, you know. | ||
| Or I think that there's a second interpretation is that before all this, I couldn't afford one. | ||
| Which may be more to the point. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's the defense you're open for. | ||
| Yeah, that looks bad. | ||
| How has it been on the ground there? | ||
| Comparatively, we talked to Sebastian on our last episode, and we get kind of a sense of his feeling, but from your perspective, comparing how things are feeling and the vibes in Austin versus Connecticut, what are some of the big takeaways that you're noticing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is cooler here. | |
| You mean temperature? | ||
| It's raining. | ||
| It is not 105 degrees and Jordan is sweating through his shirt right next to me making me feel uncomfortable. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| It is definitely cooler. | ||
| There's no voodoo donuts. | ||
| It's not as festive because you guys aren't there. | ||
| We really liven up a city. | ||
| Which is actually why it's a good thing we're not there. | ||
| Yeah, I think the problem is we liven up a trial, not a thing you want livened up. | ||
| Yeah, no, it was lively today. | ||
| That was definitely the liveliest day. | ||
| You know, it is a little different. | ||
| It moves more slowly, I think, you know, partly because there are so many plaintiffs in the case. | ||
| You know, these are the families of eight Sandy Hook victims plus an FBI agent who is implicated in these, in Jones's bogus, or not only Jones's, but the other conspiracy theorists' bogus theories. | ||
| I think you're forgetting that the FBI themselves are shadow plaintiffs. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Oh, yes, yes. | ||
| He said this is kind of a deep state deal, right? | ||
| It is a deep state thing. | ||
| It is a deep state thing, yes. | ||
| It is a deep state thing, yes, is going to live on in infamy alongside such things as, like, all we have to fear is fear itself. | ||
| And I am a smash globalist. | ||
| Or a crush globalist. | ||
| I crush globalists, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, this is all about crushing the globalists. | |
| Oh, and he stands for freedom. | ||
| That was another thing, freedom. | ||
| And his listeners are buying those 1776 coins because they like the First Amendment. | ||
| Well, actually, I want to get back to your observations, but I want to point out that he was not lying about... | ||
| Being clear about the markup on the coin. | ||
| No, it's true. | ||
| Yes, he did tell the truth there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He does lie about margins on other products, but that one, bizarrely, he is totally straight up about. | ||
| He's like, listen, when it comes to physical currency, you cannot lie. | ||
| Well, I think he said on the stand, like, conservatives know about gold and silver. | ||
| Yeah, no, exactly. | ||
| And I think that's why. | ||
| He couldn't get away with bluffing the margins on that. | ||
| Whereas other things like, I don't know how much beats cost. | ||
| His audience knows the price of gold, I guess. | ||
| Listen, my audience doesn't know that the COVID vaccine is free, but they do know 150% markup when they see it. | ||
| On gold. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Are those coins gold or are they gold tone? | ||
| I think they're silver. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| I feel like Alex has always been a little bit more of a silver hawk than gold. | ||
| Well, Meddy made it clear today. | ||
| He even pointed out, he was like, the.99 silver coin or whatever it is that costs you negative $2 to buy. | ||
| Teddy Roosevelt coin. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| His demeanor in court was unusual. | ||
| I mean, it was sort of the same in that he was sweating. | ||
| To him, this is the same temperature as Austin. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| Definitely sweating, but also a very rapid sort of eye blink and squinting a lot. | ||
| That came through on the stream. | ||
| Yeah, really kind of running his words together and doing that sort of... | ||
| Thing that he does where he has a whole slur of words together and then he gets to the right place, but it's almost like the connection goes in the middle of the sentence. | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I was, at a certain point, so off-put by the blinking that I was Googling around for like, is this a symptom of something? | ||
| And the only thing I could find is really, like, neurological damage. | ||
| Yeah, no. | ||
| That wouldn't surprise me too much. | ||
| I received more than one text about amphetamine abuse. | ||
| The CNN reporter in the courtroom mentioned that during one of the breaks he pulled out some kind of manila envelope and took some kind of medication. | ||
| Well, that's how we all carry our meds around. | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| What a weirdo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This can't not be normal for a second. | |
| Probably supplements, but who knows? | ||
| No one knows. | ||
| I did not witness this myself, I hasten to add. | ||
| Okay, so this is technically hearsay. | ||
| I would go with... | ||
| It is hearsay. | ||
| I would go with brain force. | ||
| Brain force over super male for this kind of situation. | ||
| Brain force is liquid, though, isn't it? | ||
| Oh, that's a good point. | ||
| He puts it under the tongue. | ||
| Or the baso-baso debate that happened. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That supplement that... | |
| Yeah, the beats. | ||
| Yeah, that was an interesting thing. | ||
| Like, you've been in the courtroom, obviously, this entire time, and today's display was one of the more shameful things, I think, that has ever happened. | ||
| Like, how does it feel, the just really fucked up, intense hatred it feels like between everybody professionally involved there? | ||
| Like, the lawyers, the judge, like, no one's happy, right? | ||
| Yeah, it's pretty, yeah, there's definitely a vibe that goes through the room when he was walking in and out. | ||
| And I was kind of wondering to myself, you know, especially the first three rows where you have the families and the people close to them, not a lot of love lost there. | ||
| And I was wondering, does he thrive on that or does that bother him? | ||
| I couldn't really tell. | ||
| I mean, is it just any kind of focused attention, whether it's like focused hatred or just neutral attention or admiration? | ||
| Is it all the same to Alex Jones or what? | ||
| I think from his earlier career, you could make an argument that focused negative attention is actually... | ||
| More appealing to him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He'd thrive in situations where he's yelling at people and they're all yelling at him or he's confronting somebody or he's, you know, the years of the bullhorn approaches. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think he doesn't do that as much now for whatever reason. | ||
| But even around the time of the Women's March, he was going out and yelling cupcakes at women. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| I mean, I think he likes negative attention more, and it's just kind of weird to imagine that it extends to a courtroom and Sandy Hook families. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I guess one of the reasons he's not showing up in court, I mean, I think that kind of negative attention where he's yelling at someone and they're trying to yell back and he's drowning them out is kind of what he's used to. | ||
| But to be sitting, you know, in a place where people are just quiet and actually very dignified, but also hating him nonetheless might be disconcerting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And you got to think for for Alex. | ||
| Like, I mean, if I put myself in this space and if I walked into court, I would feel like psychically like I had handcuffs on, regardless of what courtroom I was walking into for whatever purpose. | ||
| It's just that's what it associates in my brain. | ||
| Handcuffs mean half as much to Alex as not being able to scream what he wants to at somebody. | ||
| So, like, if I were going to diagnose what his main issue, I don't think he cares about the attention so much as when he's talking, he's not allowed to say what he wants to, and it's going to drive him insane, you know? | ||
| It did seem to at the end. | ||
| Yeah, he boiled up. | ||
| He boiled up like a teapot. | ||
| You could almost feel that Resistance breaking down or whatever, you know, whatever wall there was of like, all right, I'm not going to ramble off a bunch of nonsense. | ||
| And then at some point, just yeah, like tea kettle boiling, like you called it. | ||
| And it's just like that end of the day today was bananas. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know what I don't know how to put it like it's it was so unnerving. | ||
| It didn't feel good. | ||
| I keep saying that I feel unsafe watching this trial, and I just felt like I don't know what's going to happen. | ||
| Things don't feel in control. | ||
| Norm clearly doesn't have any kind of a handle on Alex. | ||
| Well, I mean, he told the judge that. | ||
| Oh, he was muttering to himself walking down the corridor after court adjourned saying, Um... | ||
| What was his thing? | ||
| Oh, he said, I am not my client's keeper. | ||
| And I thought, yeah. | ||
| I swear to God, I almost interrupted you and said, I am not my brother's keeper. | ||
| I swear to God, I was two seconds away from that. | ||
| That sounds exactly right. | ||
| That's what I would say. | ||
| This also reveals an unawareness of the Bible, because the answer to am I my brother's keeper is yes. | ||
| Yes, that's true. | ||
| In the Bible. | ||
| But Norm is trying to not be. | ||
| You know, the good guy in that story was not the one who was asked the question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Yes, it was T-Page. | ||
| I think that there is a bit of... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, I think there's a delinquency in Norm's laissez-faire attitude. | ||
| I'm grasping at words here, but I think he's being negligent. | ||
| He, you know, you got the distinct impression that he is performing for Alex as much as Alex is performing for him. | ||
| That's what I was thinking. | ||
| Yeah, that, you know, as soon as things got heated, he started fairly jumping up and down and saying, objection, objection, objection. | ||
| And as the judge pointed out, you are objecting to things your client is saying. | ||
| Which is actually a good thing when your client is Alex Jones. | ||
| But can you? | ||
| No, you can't. | ||
| It's a complete violation of the rules. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So she was saying, what are you doing, Norm? | ||
| You're basically, your objections, first of all, your client is ignoring you. | ||
| You know, when your own lawyer objects, you stop talking and you wait for a ruling because chances are you're not going to have to answer the question, right? | ||
| He just kept talking. | ||
| It didn't matter if Norm was objecting. | ||
| It didn't matter if Norm's objections were sustained, which meant that Alex wouldn't have to answer the question. | ||
| Alex just kept rolling because what he was doing was looking for an opportunity to break the rules against making this a political... | ||
| He's not supposed to talk about electoral politics, presidential politics, or political figures. | ||
| He's not supposed to make this a partisan thing. | ||
| He was absolutely looking for every opportunity to slip that in there. | ||
| He's not supposed to talk about his First Amendment rights. | ||
| He's not supposed to talk about his bankruptcy. | ||
| He's got a lot of, you know, you use the term handcuffs. | ||
| He's got a lot of handcuffs on him. | ||
| But he's determined to try and bust through all of them. | ||
| So that was all he was looking for. | ||
| And then Norm was just sort of, you know, I'm going to show Alex that I'm objecting, objecting, objecting as the family's lawyer is going after him. | ||
| So it just got to the point where he was just shouting objection. | ||
| You know, if you would have stopped him and said, what are you objecting to? | ||
| I don't think he would have had an answer because he was just adding to the general tumult in the room. | ||
| Well, you can't just say, shut up, Alex. | ||
| He missed an opportunity to be like, this whole courtroom's out of order. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| It's there. | ||
| It was right in front of you. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I hadn't thought about this, but you bringing it up in that list of things that Alex couldn't talk about, the partisan politics aspect. | ||
| Makes it seem like there was kind of an intention behind, like, conservatives know the price of gold and silver. | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And then, for no reason, when the back-and-forth exchange was happening towards the end, Alex said something along the lines of, you liberals wanted to kill everybody in Iraq. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You turn it off and on. | ||
| Yeah, but, like, the... | ||
| It's interesting that the liberals are to blame for... | ||
| It seemed like a non sequitur until I was imagining or looking at it through that prism of making this sort of a partisan political idea. | ||
| Yeah, so here's what I think. | ||
| I think there are two things here. | ||
| One is that some of the Sandy Hook families in this case... | ||
| Have been active in the gun control movement. | ||
| Some of them have been active in democratic politics. | ||
| He wants to bring that up because, of course, his false theory of the case is that. | ||
| This is an effort by the deep state and the Democrats and all of his political enemies to silence him. | ||
| This is not about, you know, the abuse these families have been subjected to because of his years worth of lying about Sandy Hook. | ||
| No, it has to be, you know, a persecution thing. | ||
| So that's one. | ||
| And second... | ||
| And because Norm is doing it too, A, he knows Alex is watching him on TV, so he is performing for his client. | ||
| But second, I get the sense that they think there are some conservatives on the jury, and they are playing to the gallery, basically. | ||
| Let's not forget the element that Norm is also just crazy. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| He is a nutbag. | ||
| So there's definitely that. | ||
| That is a factor. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think based on the way that I'm interpreting what you're saying and my experience was with the jury and Alex is just like, I feel like in his mind, in a murder trial, all you have to do is convince one member of the jury of like... | ||
| You know, reasonable, not guilty, that kind of thing. | ||
| And in my mind, what I'm seeing him do is, like, we've seen politics override everybody's thoughts to the point where sometimes... | ||
| You know, you see people say absolutely insane shit just because it's like, I'm with this team. | ||
| I'm with the Republican team, you know? | ||
| And it would make sense that he would think, you know, if I can get a couple of these conservatives to completely remove any and all independent thought, which is possible, then maybe he can get out of it. | ||
| Well, it's that... | ||
| It has to be unanimous, by the way. | ||
| See? | ||
| Yeah, it's the... | ||
| Alex talks about this and has historically for a long time. | ||
| There is a philosophy of jury nullification that has to do with usually in criminal things like, well, if the jury doesn't think what you did was wrong, they can find you innocent even if they know you're guilty. | ||
| And that is... | ||
| A dangerous kind of idea in some applications. | ||
| No, I think everybody knows that the Constitution wanted the jury to take the law into their own hands, ignore the judge and the lawyers, and just think about who's on their team. | ||
| Yeah, I think he's hoping for that. | ||
| It does feel that way. | ||
| It's kind of a Hail Mary, but hey. | ||
| I think after today, it probably is tough for... | ||
| this seriously. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I mean, that that has to be a prevalent feeling. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
because, you know, it wasn't just, I mean, the outburst at the end and the craziness got all the attention, but, you know, Throughout, he was completely mendacious, and he was pretending that he really didn't know what was going on on his show. | |
| You know, everything about, you know, this headline. | ||
| Oh, they did it. | ||
| They put that up. | ||
| Oh, somebody might have. | ||
| And, you know, at the same time, you had Infowars employees who have been deposed under oath, and they have said, Alex Jones calls all the shots, you know, for better or worse, usually for worse. | ||
| Yeah, so the idea that he wasn't sure what was going on in his own shop consistently... | ||
| Vis-a-vis Sandy Hook just doesn't make any sense. | ||
| I've never met Greg Reese. | ||
| It reminds me so much. | ||
| Whenever he said every time he was like, I didn't know who titled that or it's not my thing or I don't get daily updates. | ||
| I just remember Daria's testimony as the corporate representative. | ||
| And I mean, there were so many times where I remember just being like, well, she shouldn't have said that. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| That one says Alex controls. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| You should not have done that. | ||
| Yeah, that could be a couple later. | ||
| That was a... | ||
| Boy, speaking of the two corporate representatives, Brittany Paz, who is the corporate representative in this case, versus Daria. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Those were two different types. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This had a real mercenary aspect vibe to it. | ||
| Whereas Daria was like... | ||
| I will kill all. | ||
| She was in the religion. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A zealot. | ||
| I will destroy all of you with one look. | ||
| I wrestle with this that I'm not rich by any means, but I can't imagine doing the job that Brittany Paz did for $30,000. | ||
| That is just... | ||
| Yeah, I think she really went home feeling ripped off. | ||
| I hope, I mean, I don't know if I hope, I don't know what I hope, or if I hope it at all, but I kind of hope there was a bit of under-the-table money going there. | ||
| For the sake of workers' rights. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure, sure. | ||
| I align with labor no matter what. | ||
| There should be a union of Infowars corporate. | ||
| There's enough of them. | ||
| The WGA East might actually take them in. | ||
| They're fiction writers. | ||
| I think today, obviously, the big thing is this outburst and how the day ended. | ||
| But I actually think that there was maybe the most important thing that came out of today was the questioning about Matthew Mills, the guy who interrupted the Super Bowl interview. | ||
| And one of the reasons that I think this was so important, just to give a short breakdown of what it is, Alex had Matthew Mills on his show, who was the guy who, it was the 2014 Super Bowl, I believe. | ||
| Right after. | ||
| He interrupted the MVP press conference and yelled about how 9-11 was an inside job. | ||
| And so Alex had him on the show and was like, you're the best. | ||
| You're so great. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| I got to give you a job. | ||
| You're my soldier. | ||
| You know, whatever. | ||
| Yeah, brother. | ||
| Very enthusiastic about him. | ||
| And Alex had to own all that. | ||
| And then it's revealed. | ||
| That he, Matthew Mills, was arrested later for harassing the Soto family members at their charity 5K. | ||
| The reason I think this is so critical is that it draws this straight line between Alex endorsing, offering to hire, congratulating this person who was doing essentially... | ||
| I mean, how is it any different than harassing people at the 5K? | ||
| Oh, I will pay you to harass people. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, that actually, I agree with you guys. | |
| That was really a revelation to me. | ||
| I mean, that I didn't really know some of that. | ||
| I mean, he, the fact that this is what I didn't catch, even when I was writing my book, you know, I wrote, I put an entry in about Matthew Mills and what happened at the 5K. | ||
| But I did not know that on Infowars, you know, Joan said, and they played that clip, you know, I've got some other disruption I want to, and I'm paraphrasing here, but I've got some other disruption I want to talk to you about offline. | ||
| And this, you know, this disruption of the 5K came after that. | ||
| So whether it was exactly that or not, and of course, Joan said it wasn't. | ||
| It does, as you say, Dan, draw that line. | ||
| And one of the challenges here for the lawyers in this particular case is that... | ||
| Very few of these plaintiffs have been named by Alex Jones on the show, and it's harder to draw that direct line. | ||
| So this, I thought, I agree. | ||
| This was really kind of a revelation. | ||
| I didn't know he had had that guy on, celebrated him, and then he went on to disrupt that event for Vicki Soto, the teacher who was killed at Sandy Hook. | ||
| Yeah, and I think one of Alex's... | ||
| I don't know, maybe primary defenses, but one of the things that's thrown around a lot is even if people were harassed, it has nothing to do with me. | ||
| You can't draw the line with me. | ||
| And I think that this case of the Matthew Mills thing is so damning because it disrupts that argument. | ||
| And it's not just somebody who maybe emailed Alex or that tenuous connection. | ||
| This person had Alex's full-throated support and job offer, and they conspired on air about the behavior that is the disruption of the 5K, whether or not they actually conspired and Alex paid him to do that. | ||
| Leaving that aside, they had a conversation about him being employed to do basically that. | ||
| Well, I mean, they made I mean, I think it was Ray Nall who made the argument in court. | ||
| He was he was saying, like, OK. | ||
| Isn't it a crime for people to do these things, right? | ||
| So for people to harass somebody like that, it's a crime. | ||
| It's a federal crime. | ||
| Why haven't they been arrested? | ||
| So how can you say that they, you know, that it was that bad? | ||
| Well, Norma has done a little bit of that this case. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Especially with the exaggeration claims. | ||
| And if you've got that, boy. | ||
| Fuck me, that sucks. | ||
| If Alex can just yell Jussie Smollett whenever anybody says he makes things up, then why can't everybody just yell Matthew Mills at him whenever he's like, you can't connect me to any of this behavior. | ||
| Matthew Mills, there you go. | ||
| And that actually was a crime. | ||
| I mean, he flat out. | ||
| He got a suspended one-year term and a couple years probation for disrupting that 5K. | ||
| And, you know, that wasn't just like I stood on the sidelines and yelled. | ||
| He had a photo and approached the family and they kind of got him corralled into one area. | ||
| And, you know, it was kind of a scary thing for them. | ||
| There were a lot of little children there. | ||
| And, you know, that was bizarre. | ||
| But I had no idea that there was that direct link to Alex Jones and that he was encouraging the type of disruption that would be. | ||
| Like the disruption of the 5k. | ||
| Yeah, I'm just very hopeful that I'm sure the jury does understand the importance of that, but they see that and the disrespect Alex has for the process, and that really does sort of inform their understanding of the case. | ||
| You know, I think we already said it. | ||
| The way he's acting, it's like, why did you get defaulted? | ||
| Oh, I get it. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| It's really funny, just on a count of, like, Alex can't say... | ||
| Because it would almost be worse if he was like, no, no, no, no, listen. | ||
| When I said I was going to give him a job, I was lying to him. | ||
| See? | ||
| I lie on air to people in order to make my... | ||
| Oh, no, that doesn't sound good at all. | ||
| I was stringing him along so he'd harass people for free. | ||
| Exactly! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It was funny to see him sort of faced with his own hyperbole, too, you know, where, you know, he's saying... | ||
| My broadcast reaches 10% of the English-speaking world. | ||
| And you can just see Jones on the stand going, I know I should disagree because that would help minimize the damage done. | ||
| But boy, I love the sound of that. | ||
| 10% of the English-speaking world. | ||
| And from depositions, he knows that they have audio of him saying that on his show. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And so his his compromise, I appreciated his compromise was to be like, ah, ah, ah. | ||
| Not everybody speaks English. | ||
| That's probably like 10 million people max, right? | ||
| That 10% of the English-speaking world, there's like 20 guys who speak English. | ||
| That's one person. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| Everyone speaks Esperanto now. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And then his whole thing of, you know, disagreeing with Clint Watts, who was the social media expert who said that, you know, at minimum over the, you know, six years... | ||
| You know, from the time of the shooting, that 550 million page views of Alex Jones' Sandy Hook content came via social media. | ||
| And Jones turned that into 550 million in his press conference yesterday, 500 or earlier than the week, 550 million people. | ||
| There aren't that many. | ||
| People in the English-speaking world, you know, it wasn't 550 million people. | ||
| It was 550 million views. | ||
| Yeah, he uses straw men and the appearance of being confused in order to avoid responsibility. | ||
| That's just kind of like, it's a simple tactic, but it's also like, I don't know, it's kind of a self-directed form of gaslighting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Also, I would argue that more than 550 million people speak English on this dumb planet. | ||
| There's like 8 billion people, practically. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I would say so. | ||
| Especially a second language. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, take that, Alex. | ||
| Hey, yeah, I win this round, dickwad! | ||
| But some of them are probably babies that don't have the internet or you who aren't going to Infowars. | ||
| So what you're saying is we need to test whether or not they can respond to English words in order to see whether or not they are capable of being in the English-speaking world. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| You have to test object permanence and then see if they know what a false flag is. | ||
| That's our first two things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, speaking of English-speaking and reading world, I ran into a couple who run an antique bookstore very near the courthouse, and I was chatting with them, and the wife and the couple said, you know, we were thinking that, you know, the local newspaper interviewed me about the trial coming to town and saying, is this going to boost the fortunes of the local merchants? | ||
| And she was like, she goes, hello, a trial of a conspiracy theorist in Waterbury is going to boost the fortunes of an antiquarian bookstore. | ||
| Do you really think any of us fans are spending much time in a store like ours? | ||
| And they must... | ||
| Be reading the newspaper because she got a bunch of abuse after that article came out. | ||
| I think her business would boost if I had decided to come to this trial because that sounds like exactly where I want to be. | ||
| Boy, I worry about her if I came to the trial. | ||
| I would single white female that lady instant. | ||
| That's the life I want to live. | ||
| It's an Aquarian bookstore. | ||
| I would wear a wig. | ||
| I would pretend to be married to that guy. | ||
| By the way, that's where I go immediately. | ||
| I'm going to pretend to be the lady. | ||
| There is a used bookstore here in Chicago that I think might be a tax shelter. | ||
| I'm not entirely sure. | ||
| They have a bunch of old books and the guy there is really grumpy. | ||
| One of the greatest human beings on the planet. | ||
| I used to spend so much time in there. | ||
| He hates everyone that comes into his store and it's everything I've ever wanted and dreamed of. | ||
| Where else can you abuse people and sell products? | ||
| Oh, wait a minute. | ||
| Well, one of them involves literacy, the other very much. | ||
| Illiteracy. | ||
| It is the ultimate, it's two poles. | ||
| There's two ways to go. | ||
| We should probably wrap this up here before too long because you've been so kind with your time and you have the room service there that I don't want to keep you from it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Before we go, is there anything else that's on your mind about the trial or about Current events that we haven't brought up? | ||
| Anything that final... | ||
| Yeah, I guess the other... | ||
| I mean, we're talking about this and there are a lot of moments where you just go, oh my God. | ||
| But I have to say, there is one aspect to this that really does bother me. | ||
| And that's that... | ||
| This absolute circus that's been happening in the courtroom. | ||
| And just every time they bring up an Infowars video, I just look at these families and I think, you know, this is yet one more, you know, like mountain of abuse and disrespect. | ||
| And it just that that part is really disturbing. | ||
| You know, I mean, it's just. | ||
| Day after day, having them sit there, they're carrying that loss wherever they go. | ||
| And to be sitting there and watching this all unfold has got to be... | ||
| I mean, they have... | ||
| I've talked with them, obviously, a little bit. | ||
| Not a lot because there's not a lot of... | ||
| They don't want to be... | ||
| Of course, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, giving interviews or anything like that. | ||
| But I think... | ||
| They take it in stride, but at the same time, I'm sure there are many moments where they sit and think, how did any of this happen? | ||
| And that's the real shame of it. | ||
| I could feel through the screen a little bit of, in some of the testimonies of the plaintiffs, an almost disbelief that People are acting the way Alex and the defense are acting. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I can relate. | ||
| It's unbelievable. | ||
| Yeah, this idea of like, okay, and they've expressed this, several of the family members who have testified already, and I'm sure more will express this. | ||
| Just this idea of, I... | ||
| There has been so much unbelievable and not in a good way. | ||
| You know, just this idea of like, I can't believe any of this happened. | ||
| And now this, you know, seriously, there are people who actually say that my child or my wife or my mom or my sister didn't die. | ||
| You know, if only, as one of the moms put it, you know, if only. | ||
| Wouldn't that be amazing if that actually didn't happen? | ||
| But just that idea of, like, okay, just getting your mind around the fact that this unbelievable loss has occurred, and then there are a significant number of people saying that it never happened, and it just, you know, and so to have to, like, wade through that. | ||
| I saw one of your tweets. | ||
| Somebody said it in the courtroom next to you. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Oh, a guy behind me. | ||
| Was that Norm while he was asleep? | ||
| It didn't happen. | ||
| It didn't happen. | ||
| And then there's Norm sleeping through all of it. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| Not all of it, of course. | ||
| But yeah, no. | ||
| Today, a guy came into the courtroom and he was hushed by the bailiff because he said... | ||
| Is this a First Amendment trial? | ||
| And I thought, uh-oh. | ||
| And then they played the tape of Robbie Parker reminiscing about his daughter Emily the night after she was killed at Sandy Hook in the press conference that we all know about because Joan spent the next several years using it as fodder on his show and calling Robbie an actor. | ||
| But the guy behind me starts snickering during this press conference. | ||
| And a lot of the families were... | ||
| We're weeping. | ||
| It's one of those, you know, kind of outpourings that no matter how many times you see it, you think, oh, my God, you just feel his pain. | ||
| And he's offering forgiveness to the gunman, which is just amazing. | ||
| And so a lot of people were pretty emotional. | ||
| And here's this doofus behind me, snickering and going. | ||
| Strong words! | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| You could see I was trying to... | ||
| It's not exactly the word I'm thinking. | ||
| And he's going fake. | ||
| And this is 10 years on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Something that I just keep thinking is there's a reality that everyone else is experiencing. | ||
| And then there's... | ||
| These folks who are not willing to live in that reality. | ||
| I understand Alex's unwillingness. | ||
| I get it from studying his career and knowing what a profiteering piece of shit he is. | ||
| I understand that motivation. | ||
| We say doofus, sorry. | ||
| It's so hard to understand how people can be that deeply invested in a false reality. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That victimizes other people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And why would you even be in the courtroom in the first place if that's the way you're going to behave? | ||
| Who are you that you made the trip down there? | ||
| I understand if it's Rob Dew. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You have a contractual obligation somewhere along the line. | ||
| What a bummer. | ||
| Hey, Rob Dew is in town and he didn't even show up. | ||
| He's, you know, Rob Dew is in town. | ||
| Lock up your daughters. | ||
| I thought you said it wasn't very lively. | ||
| You got Rob Dew up in the... | ||
| The boys are back in town. | ||
| I don't know where he's hanging out, though. | ||
| It's a warning when Rob Dew comes to town. | ||
| Liquor sales shut down at 11. No, Elizabeth, that is kind of... | ||
| And it goes all the way back to that question I had about the press conference. | ||
| You feel filthy about it because when I put myself into that space, if I'm a family member, I just sit there and see that and go, why? | ||
| Why are you guys doing this? | ||
| Why are you helping him? | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| It's brutal. | ||
| Well, it's the proof of the argument of the case, essentially, that you use this fear and you use these tactics in order to get people into a mindset. | ||
| Where they're willing to do things like show up at a courtroom where grieving family members are having their day in court and say things like, this is so fake. | ||
| I know, but specifically when it comes to press. | ||
| It's ironic in a way. | ||
| Yeah, there is that. | ||
| There is that. | ||
| But when it comes to press, you know, like Alex does that on his show. | ||
| He proves every bit of why he got where he is. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Why are people aiding and abetting him? | ||
| That might be a question we'll never fully handle. | ||
| That is the question. | ||
| Well, Erica Williams, thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| It's been a pleasure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bill, Bob, thank you so much. | |
| Ooh, Bill Bob is way better than Jordan. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| That's way better. | ||
| Yeah, we should go with that. | ||
| Elizabeth, it's a delight. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I know that, you know, it's an hour later there for you and you have spaghetti and we really appreciate you taking the time. | ||
| It just doesn't get any better than that, does it? | ||
| It being an hour later than being spaghetti? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And spaghetti. | ||
| Plus spaghetti. | ||
| Plus, plus, plus. | ||
| Yeah, we're going to find out on our next episode that you flushed half that spaghetti and it'll be a scandal. | ||
| I know that a lot of the wonks already have read your book. | ||
| Everyone has talked very highly of it in the message boards and what have you. | ||
| But for anybody who doesn't know, it's Sandy Hook, The Battle for Truth, I believe. | ||
| That's the subtitle? | ||
| An American Tragedy. | ||
| Bye, Elizabeth Williams. | ||
| I am just cutting off little bits of everything. | ||
| I'm blowing it. | ||
| I think it's funny, Liz, that it did work out that a few years ago you interviewed us and that did good for your sales several years later on. | ||
| So I think it worked out well, right? | ||
| I think you guys got a couple Patreon folks out of it. | ||
| See, it's a team effort. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're like a self-licking ice cream cone. | |
| Ooh, I just got an idea for an invention. | ||
| Self-licking ice cream cone. | ||
| That's going to put a button on the dreamy, creamy summer, though. | ||
| That's going to be the end of it. | ||
| Well, thank you again. | ||
| We will talk soon, and thanks also for your coverage of the case, your perspective. | ||
| Yes, thank you very much for putting the families in the center better than just about everybody. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
| Thanks for having me on, you guys. | ||
| Love you. | ||
| Take care. | ||
| 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. |