#843: August 24, 2023 dissects Alex Jones’ baseless Maui fires claims—AP debunked his "barricade massacre" theory (115 confirmed deaths, not thousands), power lines were down, and water access was delayed due to cultural norms, not federal denial. He falsely accused FEMA of luxury hotel stays while survivors got $700, ignoring his own history of high-end resorts and performative populism. Jones’ "globalist" blame game and refusal to engage in real aid reveal trauma profiteering over truth, while his COVID-19 conspiracy echoes unaddressed long-term pandemic fallout, exposing how prolonged crises breed misplaced outrage. [Automatically generated summary]
See, now here's the other thing that's great about this, is that it's the U.S. Open, so you don't have to stay up all kinds of nonsense hours to watch it.
Yeah, that's the problem with being ahead in time, is that in order to truly screw over the U.S. fans, you have to start at, like, 8. Which is like, you're the ones in trouble, because I'm just going to wake up later.
I just think it's some of the best coffee you're going to find anywhere.
It's Wake Up America, Patriot Blend.
I don't like to hype things, but people are designed to hype.
You!
Says the man.
You see what they want you to see.
And you feel whatever it is they want you to feel.
But I am different.
When you see a blank canvas, I see a beautiful painting.
And when you hear silence, I hear symphony.
I have a thousand faces and a million names.
Accuser!
Accuser!
Destroyer!
With my free will, I can dial to the Satan channel in two seconds.
I can go into that bathroom in there and look right into my eyes for about two seconds and decide to let something else jump right into me in the driver's seat.
And that something could absolutely tear people's arms out of their sockets.
My favorite wrestler died at 36. Just absolutely tragic.
It's really tough to deal with celebrity deaths because I don't know these people.
I don't know any of these people.
And when a celebrity dies, people talk about...
You know, like, I met this person at X, Y, or Z thing.
Eulogizing of public figures is tough.
But this hits hard for me.
I loved Bray Wyatt, the character.
I thought there was an artistry to it that was so far beyond other things that I see in pro wrestling.
Now, granted...
This isn't to knock other types of pro wrestling.
It's just something that's very different.
There's an immersiveness to it.
There's a mythology.
There's this guy who is creating a world that is supposed to live within this other world.
It's nonsensical on some levels.
But he had such an amazing gift to be able to draw you into it with this speaking, this skill of just, like, Weaving a tapestry of words that make it feel like it's not silly somehow.
And, you know, I think that...
I was pretty harsh and pretty, you know, I was very notoriously worried about Uncle Howdy.
The most recent incarnation of what Bray Wyatt was doing, the last time he came back from sort of a repackaging of the gimmick, because I thought, like, well, this is worrisome.
There's another silly mask involved, and I don't quite know what the point is, and then it turned into that glow-in-the-dark match that was very weird.
I was very concerned, but I was willing to see how it played out, and that's the kind of faith that I had in this person, this artist, this craft.
And I feel like I felt so comfortable in that worry.
Because I had a sense and a feeling that is obviously now shown to be wrong, that for the rest of my life, essentially, I would see other things he created.
You know, maybe this Uncle Howdy thing, maybe this is a zero.
So here's the headline that Alex is talking about from the Associated Press.
Quote, From a very broad reading of just the headline, Alex's storyline seems like it might hold some water, but in cases like this, it's usually good to actually read the article.
Also, it doesn't hold water that, like, they murdered.
But in terms of, like, if you just take the headline and you ascribe reality to it, then it's like, oh, only the people who dodged barricades survived.
Everyone else is dead.
You know, whatever.
There are questions that still linger about how public alert systems were and were not used effectively to warn people to flee, but this is the aspect of the headline that Alex is talking about, this barricade thing.
So I'm going to leave all the other stuff aside.
If you read the article, it's very clear that the barricades that are mentioned have to do with police setting up, blocking off streets where the fire is blocking the road, or a street where there are crews actively working on down power lines.
Now, at the same time, I do think that from the Associated Press and from other things that you read, there are definite concerns about how prepared people were.
Now you're defending multiple, which is like, I would rather sacrifice a million lives at the altar of capitalism than for one fucking second deal with it.
I'm reading through the stacks of news, and I saw something that felt like deja vu from 10 days ago, 11 days ago.
We know the fires happened in Maui now, 16 days ago.
Locals reported, and I didn't just believe it, it's a small town in Lahaina, so I went and checked their names and who they were in the local towns, and indeed...
Well-known town fixtures, the equivalent of the sheriff from Mayberry, saying they would not let the men, women, and children get out, and they blockaded the roads, the open, safe highway, hundreds of yards away.
We played multiple interviews.
We had reporters on the ground that confirmed it.
But it was still just the eyewitnesses.
The Associated Press has confirmed in their words that under state and federal direction, the Lahaina Town and Sheriff's Department, that's now involved in a massive cover-up, barricaded the two road exits and would not let people leave as they watched the buildings and their cars burn in front of them.
So part of the issue that comes into play here is that some of the roads were closed, but those roads were impassable.
Roads being closed isn't proof of, like, a grand conspiracy to trap people in a fire.
And that's what Alex is doing.
It's what he's saying.
And I understand that free speech is important and should be protected, but at a certain point, it's also important to recognize what Alex is doing.
He's accusing people of murder.
This is slander against the public employees in Maui, and it's not just harmless shit talk.
Like, I have no idea what the best course of action is to hold someone responsible for stuff like this, but just ignoring it and saying it's his opinion is something I'm...
In deadly Maui fires, many had no warning and no way out.
Those who dodged the barricades survived.
That's not an Infowars headline, though that was a headline a week ago we put out just like that.
Identical, basically.
And they had let the site say, how dare Jones claim.
They attacked me all over the national news, all over newspapers, all over YouTube.
Jones is insane saying the police blocked the people in.
And now...
The Associated Press, in a detailed report, the government admits they barricaded them in and didn't let them drive down the clean, open road to the highway, 200 yards away.
You see here the essential lie Alex needs to tell for this story to work, which is that the roads were clear.
If he were to accept that there were downed trees and live electric wires and fire in the roads and that they were impassable, his entire charade falls apart instantly.
The very AP article that Alex is citing says, quote, the utility, Hawaiian Electric, says more than 30 power poles are down in West Maui, including along the Hanoape 'iilani Highway and the south end of Lahaina.
The fire department closed the Lahaina bypass road because of the fire.
The closures block the only route out of Lahaina to the south.
The conspiracy that Alex is selling the audience only works if there isn't a reason for the roads to have been closed.
And because that piece is so critical, like that piece, Alex lies to make that piece exist within this puzzle.
It is part of the fundamental reason that it drives people insane.
It's just like, if you've ever had to try and...
Build a thing with all the regulations in Chicago, you know, you've got people, the inspector after inspector being like, this is two inches of difference, you know, and you're like, this is bullshit, you ticky-tack assholes, and then you look at the way we regulate our fucking electrical grid, and you're like, really?
I would assume, I don't know, because the review and investigation hasn't been fully completed, but I would assume there are some iffy decisions that are made.
Yeah, I mean, it's just so mind-boggling how obvious it is, you know, in retrospect, to just be like, no, this can't happen anymore, so now we change it, you know?
As flames tore through a West Valley neighborhood, car after car of fleeing residents headed for the one paved road out of town in a desperate race for safety.
And car after car was turned back towards the rapidly spreading fires by a barricade blocking access to Highway 30 with the police enforcing it.
The words, quote, with police enforcing it, though, don't appear in the AP article.
Alex is adding those words because he wants to heighten the drama of the story that he's telling to the audience.
The impression they're supposed to have is of jackbooted police holding the line and not letting anyone escape the fire, so you have to understand that he's going to make this article say that, whether it actually does or not.
The headline works for Alex's propaganda purposes, but he hasn't actually read the article itself, and as he cold reads it on air, you can get the sense that it's not really fitting the narrative well enough, so he dresses it up with his own editorializing, meant to appear as if it's from the article.
This is him defrauding the audience, because he doesn't give a shit about the reality of the things he covers.
You notice, though, how much he needs the audience to think that the AP agrees with him, because on some subconscious or conscious level...
He knows the audience understands that the AP is depicting reality far more accurately than Alex himself.
Alex knows that for his narrative to match up with AP reporting, that sends the message that his narrative matches up with actual reality.
If what Alex said was true and the mainstream media just lies and who cares about them, then he wouldn't need to try to Trojan horse his own words into an AP article to make it sound more like him.
The charade would be unnecessary, but the charade is necessary.
Fundamentally, Alex knows he's a liar.
And on some level, his listeners know that they're trying to convince themselves that the fiction they believe is actually truth.
That's why Alex always says things are in the mainstream news and why he constantly lies about headlines from mainstream outlets.
The obviously higher credibility of those outlets, even among the people who swear to hate them, is important to hijack.
Yeah, and you'd know it was a dumb shit blog post because it'd say something like, oh, it's like the scene in Cloverfield when they're trying to escape Manhattan and there's the police barricades.
And you would know it was some dumb shit blog because Alex wouldn't specify anything and I would have to dig to try and figure out like, oh, this is from 9-11 blogger.
The words, quote, but as dozens saved themselves, thousands died, including children, are not in this article.
What happened is that Alex started reading the next paragraph and realized that it didn't work for him.
The actual next line is, quote, Alex skimmed that as he was reading aloud.
And realize that this doesn't work for his narrative, man.
Dozens of people being trapped doesn't match the level of atrocity he's trying to portray, which is why he completely changed the sentence while pretending it was still from the article.
Instead of dozens being trapped, now it's dozens escaping and thousands dying.
For you or me, dozens of deaths, that's horrifying and it's a tragedy, but that number is disappointing for Alex, and I suspect he thinks it won't get the audience excited, so he just makes up thousands of fatalities.
As of the most recent update from the Maui government, there have been 115 confirmed fatalities, with 99% of the area searched.
There are 388 people who have been reported unaccounted for, and the hunt is on for those people, many of whom may well be alive somewhere.
They just haven't been found.
Even assuming the absolute worst, that all of these people who are unaccounted for are dead, that's 503 people.
And sensationalize shit because you're a lying asshole.
Further, the article doesn't say anything about water being denied, but if you read other coverage of the fires, you would understand the issue here.
The issue is one of water rights, and how it's a hot topic in Hawaii.
A developer wanted to divert streams to fight the fires, but native Hawaiians are very opposed to water diversion schemes, going all the way back to the times of plantations coming in and essentially stealing a precious natural resource at the expense of the people who live there.
Yeah, this is a tense issue, but at the same time, by 6pm on the day of the fire outbreak, permission was given to divert streams to fight the fire.
Alex is just repeating some dumb conspiracy talking point he saw in a meme and not understanding the reality behind this, nor the cultural issues that are at play with the decision in the greater conversation.
Also, the article in no way implies or reports that people were murdered.
This is a criminal misuse of the source, and it's being done for Alex's sensationalist purposes to drive attention to himself and profit his own enterprises.
Yeah, you know, this is one of those things that I really do feel like we could nail down.
You know, like, if you get, like, fucking...
Ten points total, you know?
You have ten demerits before you lose your license to broadcast if you read a sentence and then you decide that the next sentence of the paragraph doesn't work for you and you just change it completely.
In deadly Maui fires, many had no warning and no way out.
Those who dodged the barricade survived that were put up as the fire arrived, the water denied, the power left on, the sirens never turned on, and it's not like it's some desert property nobody wants.
It's the most expensive square inch property on earth that a bunch of poor people refuse to sell.
Alex should have learned his lesson about insisting on going places to uncover non-existent cover-ups back with Sandy Hook, but I guess he's gonna try to encourage some more harassment of public officials and locals.
Hope he doesn't end up causing more...
Terror to people's lives.
Oh, he definitely will.
That being said, the least surprising news in the world is that Alex is going to take another vacation to Hawaii and pretend it's for work purposes.
This article may be that long if you print it out with large font like Alex does, but it's not very long and Alex didn't read it.
This is a complete misrepresentation of what's in that article because, again, he wants to attach the credibility of the Associated Press to the sensationalized and made-up things he's telling his audience.
It is true that the sirens weren't used, and that is mentioned in the article.
This is probably part of why on the 17th, Herman Andaya, the Maui Emergency Management Agency administrator, submitted his resignation.
Hawaii's Attorney General is still conducting a review of the decisions made during the emergency, so a lot more will be known about the rationale for not activating the sirens in due time, but for now, it's very unfair for Alex to report to his listeners that this was done in an attempt to kill people.
I don't know if this is the case, but I wonder if it is.
I haven't seen this in any article, but this is just my thought, and maybe I'm stupid.
But I could see not sounding off the sirens, because there was also a hurricane going around.
And I think it could have confused people, because you'd want to behave differently depending on what the emergency is.
Like, if it's a fire, you evacuate.
If it's a hurricane, maybe you evacuate.
Or maybe, like, there are different behaviors.
I don't know.
That's just my thought.
I have no idea.
Another AP article about the communication problems during the fire involves input from Carl Kim, the director of the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center, who said, quote, who, quote, said it's...
Too soon to know exactly how the warning and alert system might have saved more lives in Lahaina and noted that wildfires are often more challenging to manage than volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and even earthquakes because they are more difficult to detect and track over time.
We're still in a wet cement moment for Alex with this tragedy, and he's trying to make sure that his version of it sticks with the audience's mind before more information can come to light that helps people better understand the specific failings in things like preparedness that created this outcome.
Improving preparedness and working together to make a better government that works for the people doesn't profit Alex, which is why that's never the conversation.
The conversation is always about evil people carrying out evil plans because you can't do shit about that other than stay glued to conspiracy bullshit and support idiots like Alex who promise to keep you informed and keep you safe because they're the ones who are doing the battling.
They're on the front lines, tip of the spear, blah blah blah.
It's all nonsense.
Actual solutions are a detriment to Alex's bottom line and profits.
Yes, and if you impede people's ability to improve things and make things work better, there's a higher likelihood that there will be conflagrations that happen that I can blame on the evil people, and then the cycle will repeat.
I mean, not just that, but still improve things so that the idea is I am going to make as much money off of this fire as I possibly can, but I still want them to not make any more fires.
This wasn't murder, and that's definitely not outside Alex's price range, given the luxury resorts we found him staying at in his recent vacations.
FEMA personnel who are responding to the disaster have to stay somewhere, and I don't know if I'm too interested in pretending that this is the kind of government expenditure that somehow passed the line or whatever.
This is what's known as pretend populism.
Alex wants you to think that he's just like you.
He can't afford nice hotel rooms, and he's offended that the people in Lahaina aren't getting more from the government.
But none of that's real.
He's super rich, even with the bankruptcy, and owns multiple watches that cost more than most of his audience's net worth.
More importantly, his political beliefs dictate that the people in Lahaina shouldn't even be getting $700 from the government.
Why should they get a handout just because something bad happened to them?
Sure, they lost all their property, but shouldn't they have had that insured?
Is it really the government's job to make up for their bad decisions not getting insurance?
Alex's extreme conservatism doesn't believe in social assistance programs, and if folks like Ron Paul had their way, this wouldn't be something the government would do at all.
This is why charities exist.
If there are people who are downtrodden, voluntary giving and support from churches, that's all they really need.
It's actually oppressive for the government to give people money to bail them out of difficult times because it sends the message that you can just be irresponsible and expect everyone else to clean up the mess when you get in trouble.
This is what Alex's political policy set involves.
But he and all the other fake-ass populist posturing idiots like him understand that people generally find this mentality super cold and they don't like it.
That's why they put on this charade of being offended that the government didn't give people more money.
They know that normal, caring humans feel that way, so they're appealing to that feeling in normal humans, but...
You may notice that Alex isn't advocating that the government actually give out more assistance.
He's just trying to exploit the fact that you care about the victims of the fire and then using that to attack his enemies.
As I look up who owns what before I stay there, that's another reason I don't stay there.
Eddie Bravo was staying there about a couple weeks ago when he came to hang out with me and Joe Rogan, and I went to pick him up there, and I said, hey, Eddie, you know who owns this?
So, yeah, Bill Gates, along with Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal al-Saud, are the primary owners of Four Seasons through stock holdings.
I guess if Alex wants to stay away because of that, good for him, man.
I mean, like, you know.
Vote with your dollars.
Cool.
I don't have a problem with that, necessarily.
He's a total liar about researching where he stays, though.
He just saw the Bill Gates thing in a meme and decided to take it on as the result of some research he does.
You can tell this because on his last vacation to Kauai, he stayed at the Royal Sonesta Hotel, which is owned by Service Properties Trust.
If you look a little bit into Service Properties Trust, you'll find that the top two stockholders for them are BlackRock and the Vanguard Group, two entities who are big old villains for Alex at the moment.
In fact, he's saying that the power was left on in Maui because BlackRock owns the power utilities since they're part of this grand conspiracy.
So either Alex is lying about looking into who owns the hotels he stays at because it makes him sound smarter and more principled than he is, Or he actually secretly supports BlackRock and Vanguard.
And Goldman Sachs, too.
They are also heavy investors in Service Properties Trust.
Alex is a fucking loser.
Desperate to pull out this little trivia to make himself feel smarter and better than everyone around him.
But it's all an act.
He's a total fraud.
Nonsense.
And I didn't pull this clip, but there was a moment, just a tiny little moment that I found delightful, where he was like...
Like, I remember my mom, when we were younger, wouldn't, I can't remember what gas station it was, but there was some gas station that, like, I guess probably one of the ones that had a spill or something.
I'm like, nope, we gotta drive a little bit further to go to a different gas station.
Instead, Alex pretends he's on some kind of a high horse because he's giving money to BlackRock and Vanguard and Goldman Sachs instead of Bill Gates and Asadi Prince.
And it is like, whenever it is this, it is impossible if you are immunocompromised not to think like, oh...
Well, this is a small enough group or a group that just doesn't have enough power to advocate for itself in any way or whatever, and people are just totally fine with letting us go.
It's hard not to view that whenever nobody even seems to care that it's still there and it's still a serious threat.
But mass murder where you caught them red-handed like this demands attention.
And quite frankly, it's very frustrating because if I go to Hawaii, I want to relax and have a good time.
I'm not going to be doing that while I'm there.
I might have a dinner or maybe swim in the pool for an hour, but it's going to be really torturous to be around these mass murderers and know what they did while you're in such a beautiful place.
I can't imagine thinking anything, like, seeing this happen and thinking anything other than I will go to Hawaii when they say, the locals say that it's okay, and I will go where.
Outside of when we do Dream of Creamy Summers, drive for charities and stuff.
I don't like to talk too much about charity stuff that I give to.
But the first thing I thought was...
Oh my god, it's so awesome that someone made a spreadsheet that vetted GoFundMes that are of people who are there so direct aid can go to...
Like, that's the first thing I thought and engaged with.
Not, god, I'm gonna find these nebulous, obscure, vague, unnamed mass murderers by going and...
I'll have a dinner, I'll sit at the pool for a little while.
It's such shit.
Just, it's...
I don't know.
I remember when Rogan was sort of teetering on the edge of being a full-on shithead, and he was talking about if you're not on the side of helping refugees, you're not on the team.