Knowledge Fight - #984: Formulaic Objections Part 16
Aired: 2024-11-25
Duration: 01:19:20


=== A Bright Spot Discovered (04:35) ===

[00:00:21]  I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys.
[00:00:29]  Knowledge fight.
[00:00:30]  Dan and George.
[00:00:30]  Knowledge fight.
[00:00:32]  I need, I need money.
[00:00:36]  Andy and Kansas.
[00:00:40]  Andy and Kansas.
[00:00:41]  Stop it.
[00:00:42]  Andy and Kansas.
[00:00:43]  Andy and Kansas.
[00:00:44]  It's time to pray.
[00:00:46]  Andy and Kansas, you're on the air.
[00:00:48]  Thanks for holding us.
[00:00:49]  Hello, Alex.
[00:00:50]  I'm a first time caller.
[00:00:50]  I'm a huge fan.
[00:00:51]  I love your room.
[00:00:52]  Knowledge fight.
[00:00:53]  Knowledgefight.com.
[00:00:59]  Hey, everybody.
[00:01:00]  Welcome back to Knowledge Fight.
[00:01:01]  I'm Dan.
[00:01:01]  I'm Jordan.
[00:01:01]  We're a couple of dudes like to sit around, worship at the altar of Selene, and talk a little bit about...
[00:01:05]  Alex Jones.
[00:01:06]  Oh, indeed we are.
[00:01:07]  Dan.
[00:01:07]  Jordan.
[00:01:08]  Dan.
[00:01:08]  Jordan.
[00:01:09]  Quick question for you.
[00:01:10]  What's up?
[00:01:10]  What's your bright spot today, buddy?
[00:01:11]  When do you go first?
[00:01:12]  My bright spot is Sundial, an album by No Name.
[00:01:17]  Came out last year.
[00:01:18]  It's kind of old.
[00:01:19]  But I've been listening to it again for the past few days.
[00:01:23]  Fantastic.
[00:01:25]  Absolutely a great album.
[00:01:27]  Nice.
[00:01:27]  And it's fun, because if you listen to it, she reads the same books I do.
[00:01:31]  Okay.
[00:01:31]  So it's nice.
[00:01:32]  It's good stuff.
[00:01:33]  You can get some of these obscure references.
[00:01:36]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:01:36]  Literary references.
[00:01:37]  Yeah, and some revolution.
[00:01:40]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:01:41]  It's good stuff.
[00:01:42]  Okay.
[00:01:42]  Yep.
[00:01:43]  Stuff like about Bell's Doth Tolling.
[00:01:46]  Something like that.
[00:01:47]  Stuff about what the crow said.
[00:01:49]  Stuff where...
[00:01:50]  Some of these obscure references in literature.
[00:01:52]  A little bit like that.
[00:01:54]  I mean, Audre Lorde is a poet.
[00:01:56]  I think she's definitely up there.
[00:01:58]  Sure.
[00:01:59]  Absolutely.
[00:01:59]  Aren't we all poets?
[00:02:01]  No.
[00:02:02]  Yeah, you're right.
[00:02:04]  I'm glad you're enjoying that album.
[00:02:07]  I don't know.
[00:02:08]  Actually, now I don't know if I've just talked about this or if I've already made it a bright spot, but I'm going to do it anyway.
[00:02:14]  And that is, I saw a commercial in Japan.
[00:02:19]  They have Super Mario World, where you just get to run around in Mario.
[00:02:23]  In the actual Super Mario World?
[00:02:25]  Yes.
[00:02:25]  There's pipes you go through.
[00:02:27]  Fantastic.
[00:02:27]  It's like a theme park, but it's like Mario.
[00:02:31]  They are now opening.
[00:02:32]  At the end of this year, a side world that is Donkey Kong Country.
[00:02:36]  Get the fuck out of here.
[00:02:37]  So you can wander around, find Donkey Kong, go bang on some drums, and I have never felt more like I need to go somewhere.
[00:02:46]  Yeah.
[00:02:47]  I have to go.
[00:02:49]  I like that.
[00:02:50]  Yeah.
[00:02:50]  I'll go.
[00:02:51]  It seems like...
[00:02:53]  I just...
[00:02:54]  I can't explain it.
[00:02:56]  I've almost never felt the draw to be like, you must make an appearance at this thing.
[00:03:03]  You must be there.
[00:03:05]  Interesting.
[00:03:05]  But to be in full life, life-sized Donkey Kong country, it just feels like it would be like, your childhood self would never forgive you for not going.
[00:03:14]  Yeah.
[00:03:15]  There's like a mine cart roller coaster.
[00:03:17]  That's crazy.
[00:03:18]  It's just perfect.
[00:03:19]  That's amazing.
[00:03:19]  Probably go find all the animal friends around.
[00:03:21]  Of course.
[00:03:22]  Like Rambi's hanging out somewhere.
[00:03:23]  Of course.
[00:03:24]  Yeah.
[00:03:24]  100%.
[00:03:26]  I have no notes.
[00:03:27]  I would absolutely do that.
[00:03:28]  I agree with you.
[00:03:29]  All right, well, let's consider this for the future.
[00:03:30]  I'm down.
[00:03:31]  I've always wanted to go to Japan.
[00:03:32]  My childhood best friend, he wound up moving to Japan.
[00:03:37]  I'm sure he's still alive, maybe.
[00:03:39]  Maybe reconnect.
[00:03:41]  Yeah, why not?
[00:03:42]  At the Donkey Kong.
[00:03:44]  That's where I would meet anybody.
[00:03:47]  Well, here's the thing.
[00:03:48]  Shigeru Miyamoto was doing the tour of Donkey Kong land.
[00:03:53]  Wild.
[00:03:54]  And he was having the blast.
[00:03:55]  Of course he was.
[00:03:57]  But one of the things that he showed off was there's a congo game that you need three people for.
[00:04:02]  Fantastic.
[00:04:02]  You, me, your childhood friend.
[00:04:04]  Nice.
[00:04:05]  Let's get on those congos.
[00:04:06]  Let's do it.
[00:04:06]  Let's get on the drums.
[00:04:07]  Done and done.
[00:04:10]  So anyway, that just brought a real tickle to my life.
[00:04:13]  I'm in.
[00:04:14]  Okay, let's play on it.
[00:04:15]  Okay.
[00:04:16]  So, Jordan, today we have an episode to go over.
[00:04:18]  We're going to be talking about...
[00:04:20]  So...
[00:04:22]  When we started this show, we needed some diversionary stuff.
[00:04:26]  We had Alex Jones, we had the Infowars world, but we needed something different.
[00:04:30]  So we had Wacky Wednesdays, we talked about Space Weirdos, and that was a lot of fun.
[00:04:34]  That was great.
[00:04:35]  Until it wasn't.
[00:04:35]  Until it very much wasn't.
[00:04:37]  And then we discovered something that...
[00:04:39]  You never thought that a side type of show could really be more popular than Space Weirdos.

=== Finite Depositions (03:32) ===

[00:04:46]  Yeah.
[00:04:47]  But then we started covering depositions.
[00:04:49]  Which is weird.
[00:04:50]  And people lost their shit.
[00:04:53]  I still don't understand it.
[00:04:55]  I don't either.
[00:04:55]  I really don't.
[00:04:58]  I'm glad that they enjoy it, because I enjoy it as well.
[00:05:00]  And I think that there's a lot to learn from it, and so, you know, that's great.
[00:05:04]  Sure.
[00:05:05]  But, you know, it's a finite resource.
[00:05:07]  There's only so many depositions that exist in the world, and so we can't just...
[00:05:13]  You know, put them out all over the place.
[00:05:15]  Yeah, there aren't a lot of public depositions that you would be, like, interested in.
[00:05:20]  Yeah.
[00:05:20]  You know?
[00:05:21]  Intersecting with our worlds and some of the key players and what have you.
[00:05:25]  Yeah.
[00:05:26]  And so today, we actually have a deposition that has fallen into our lap.
[00:05:30]  It is a deposition of Owen Shroyer.
[00:05:33]  Oh my god.
[00:05:34]  He has been sued over misidentifying the Allen, Texas shooter from May 6th, 2023.
[00:05:42]  And this is a little short deposition carried out by Mark Bankston.
[00:05:48]  Hello, Mark.
[00:05:49]  And I think that what it lacks in length, it makes up in moments of very piercing through the bullshit.
[00:06:02]  Okay, alright.
[00:06:03]  I think that there's a couple moments that are like, oh wow, this has been caught on tape.
[00:06:08]  I do think that part of the joy of the deposition is, like, we have taken these people from an arena where they are the masters, you know, the masters of lies, the circus tent people, and we've put them in a cage where they can't spread their wings, you know?
[00:06:28]  Yeah, and they can still lie.
[00:06:30]  Of course they can.
[00:06:30]  They're still able to do the same games that they...
[00:06:34]  You know, like to, but they just won't get the same stimulus back.
[00:06:38]  Right.
[00:06:38]  The lawyers aren't going to be a camera staring back at them.
[00:06:42]  Totally.
[00:06:43]  Or an adoring crowd at a Tucker Carlson show.
[00:06:46]  The lawyers are going to ask a follow-up question or pretty much know that they're not going to give them a sincere answer.
[00:06:55]  Yeah.
[00:06:56]  Even if generally you are predisposed to like the person.
[00:07:00]  Uh, and not have anything, like, uh, over your head.
[00:07:05]  Doing a deposition is still not a pleasant experience.
[00:07:07]  Nah.
[00:07:08]  No.
[00:07:09]  Owen's having a very unpleasant one.
[00:07:10]  Yeah, I believe that.
[00:07:11]  And, uh, we'll get to business on that, but first, let's take a little moment to say hello to some new walks.
[00:07:15]  Ooh, that's a great idea.
[00:07:15]  So first, I was listening to the show during a flight when we hit heavy turbulence, and for a fleeting moment, I thought the last thing I'd hear in the world would be Alex Jones arguing with Chad GPT.
[00:07:24]  Thank you very much.
[00:07:24]  You're now a policy walk.
[00:07:25]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:07:26]  Thank you very much.
[00:07:27]  That would be surreal.
[00:07:29]  Yeah.
[00:07:29]  Next, we worship at the altar of Zazzle's DJ Lilo, Bailey, and Miggy.
[00:07:35]  Thank you so much.
[00:07:35]  You're now a policy wonk.
[00:07:36]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:07:37]  Thank you very much!
[00:07:38]  Also, I'm sorry I didn't empathize enough with that horrifying moment of the turbulence, and I'm glad you made it.
[00:07:43]  Glad you made it, of course.
[00:07:44]  Next, Hashhole, my name, LOL.
[00:07:47]  You think I'm going to vote for the party that can't control the weather?
[00:07:50]  Thank you so much.
[00:07:50]  You're now a policy wonk.
[00:07:51]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:07:52]  Thank you very much!
[00:07:53]  And we've got a technocrat in the mix, Jordan, so thank you so much to Moo Bear.
[00:07:56]  You are now a technocrat.
[00:07:58]  I'm a policy wonk.

=== Mass Shooting Misinformation (03:02) ===

[00:07:59]  Four stars.
[00:08:00]  Go home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant.
[00:08:02]  Someone sodomite sent me a bucket of poop.
[00:08:04]  Daddy Shark.
[00:08:05]  Bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp.
[00:08:07]  Jar Jar Binks has a Caribbean black accent.
[00:08:11]  He's a loser little titty baby.
[00:08:14]  I don't want to hate black people.
[00:08:16]  I renounce Jesus Christ.
[00:08:17]  Thank you so much.
[00:08:18]  Thank you very much.
[00:08:22]  Shooting, mass shooting that happened in 2023.
[00:08:28]  Probably, it's a big deal, but maybe less regularly present in our minds in the scale of mass shootings.
[00:08:36]  A lot of the depositions that we've done have been about the Sandy Hook case.
[00:08:40]  Of course.
[00:08:41]  And so this one, I'll give you a little bit of a refresher on what happened.
[00:08:45]  On May 6th, 2023, there was a mass shooting at a mall in Allen, Texas, leading to the deaths of eight people plus the shooter.
[00:08:52]  In the time immediately after the shooting, information started to come out about the identity of the shooter, namely that he was someone who had an online footprint full of Nazi tattoos and racist right-wing writing.
[00:09:03]  There were indications that he had reposted content from Tim Pool and libs of TikTok and endorsed Nick Fuentes and V-Dare.
[00:09:16]  This posed an optics problem for these people, since carrying out a racially motivated mass shooting is kind of the logical conclusion of a lot of their content.
[00:09:24]  It's not good for business when someone carries out the domestic terrorism you're trying to incite, so when this happens, Alex and the people in his orbit will always call it a false flag.
[00:09:33]  So that's what they did.
[00:09:34]  As pictures started to circulate of the shooter's online history and Nazi tattoos, it became important to undermine that narrative so it didn't take hold.
[00:09:44]  Nazis aren't supposed to be a real thing or problem, according to Nazi apologists.
[00:09:48]  So a guy with, like, SS tattoos killing eight people in a racially motivated attack, that's not good for business.
[00:09:53]  That can't exist.
[00:09:55]  The angle that many of these right-wing media figures decided to take was to Google the alleged shooter's name, at which point they found another person with the same name who didn't have Nazi tattoos.
[00:10:05]  The story started to become that this second person they'd found was the real shooter, and that the guy with Nazi tattoos was just another guy, and that the media was trying to say that he was the shooter so they could make the story about a Nazi to make Trump people look bad.
[00:10:18]  It was important to invalidate the story that this guy was a Nazi extremist because he has the risk of making normal people associate Nazi extremist murderers with their content model.
[00:10:28]  And once the larger population starts taking that seriously, the money train might end up slowing down or stopping.
[00:10:35]  And that leads us to the next day on Owen's show where he showed the pictures of the wrong person, identifying them as the Alan Maul shooter in order to deflect from stories that the actual shooter was a Nazi dude who liked Tim Pool.

=== Reviewed Materials Confusion (14:23) ===

[00:10:47]  And so that's where Owen gets on air on that Sunday and misidentifies this person.
[00:10:56]  It's pretty, you know, honestly in terms of like what happened, it's a pretty clear cut.
[00:11:02]  You misidentified this person.
[00:11:05]  So he has a difficult position to begin from.
[00:11:09]  Right.
[00:11:10]  It's almost like sometimes it feels like things should just happen.
[00:11:15]  In response.
[00:11:16]  You know, like, oh, you did the thing and then the mousetrap lands.
[00:11:19]  Instead of like, oh, now we gotta figure stuff out.
[00:11:22]  You know what I mean?
[00:11:23]  And this one also seems like a situation where Owen would stand very...
[00:11:28]  He stands to lose very little by just being an adult and being like, look, there's some...
[00:11:35]  made some mistake here.
[00:11:36]  Yeah.
[00:11:37]  You know?
[00:11:37]  I mean, I think he doesn't because he understands how much it implicates how everything he does is a mistake.
[00:11:42]  Right.
[00:11:43]  But...
[00:11:44]  That pride doesn't seem all that important to maintain here.
[00:11:47]  Yeah, it does feel like sometimes you can just say, I chunked it, and everybody will scratch it and move on.
[00:11:54]  Even if you're worried that people are going to hold your feet to the fire, I think they're not.
[00:12:02]  At least that's the experience we've had so far.
[00:12:04]  So just be like, I chunked it, moving on.
[00:12:07]  You know?
[00:12:08]  It seems easier than they're making it.
[00:12:11]  Yep, I think so.
[00:12:12]  Yeah.
[00:12:13]  So we start, and I feel like I've begun to notice that most of these depositions, they begin with a question of, what did you do to prepare for this?
[00:12:22]  Oh, God.
[00:12:23]  Which I always find interesting, because everybody minimizes it.
[00:12:26]  They don't want to be like, I have read everything.
[00:12:29]  Right, right, right, right.
[00:12:30]  Because then they have to take responsibility for knowing all of that stuff.
[00:12:33]  That's no good.
[00:12:34]  So it basically did nothing.
[00:12:36]  Mr. Schroyer, when were you first told you were given a deposition in this case?
[00:12:42]  Boy, I don't know the exact date.
[00:12:46]  Do you recall when it would have been?
[00:12:49]  Unfortunately, she's not able to help you out here.
[00:12:51]  No, I don't know the exact date.
[00:12:52]  Okay.
[00:12:53]  I'm guessing sometime in the past couple weeks there?
[00:12:55]  I would say maybe a month.
[00:12:56]  Okay.
[00:12:57]  I've known.
[00:12:58]  Who have you spoken to about this deposition?
[00:13:01]  My attorney, and I believe that's it.
[00:13:05]  Okay.
[00:13:05]  Did you review any documents for the deposition?
[00:13:09]  Yes.
[00:13:10]  Can you describe what documents you reviewed?
[00:13:12]  An affidavit that I signed for this case and then two videos that are relevant to this case.
[00:13:18]  Okay.
[00:13:19]  I would take it those would be the May 7th and May 8th episodes of your show?
[00:13:25]  It is the episode pertaining to the original documents you sent me and then the retraction video.
[00:13:33]  Okay.
[00:13:33]  So right off the bat, you kind of get a combative tone from Owen.
[00:13:37]  He doesn't want to be there, and I think that as we go through this, the reason is super clear.
[00:13:41]  He has run out of excuses for his actions, and he kind of knows that Mark doesn't really have any super meaningful questions for him.
[00:13:49]  Like, on some level, they've done this deposition already the last time when Bill big-dogged him with the gummy worms.
[00:13:55]  Yep.
[00:13:58]  It's impossible to enter this without recognizing that it's like, ah, You made the same error here.
[00:14:05]  You made the same mistake.
[00:14:06]  We're doing another one of these.
[00:14:09]  Run it back.
[00:14:09]  Yeah.
[00:14:10]  You've already had this conversation with the same lawyers.
[00:14:12]  Yeah.
[00:14:12]  It is interesting because when you listen to it now as compared to the last one that we listened to, I feel like Owen has learned some of the language better.
[00:14:25]  Of the deposition language kind of thing.
[00:14:29]  But not in a way of understanding the language, more like in a way of, if I make the same sounds back at them, then they'll think that I'm, you know what I mean?
[00:14:38]  You know, it's not like he doesn't understand the meaning of the word pertains, or that kind of thing.
[00:14:44]  But he knows that this is the type of word you use here.
[00:14:47]  I think he maybe has a bit more confidence, too, because I think maybe he's on the other side of going to the prison.
[00:14:54]  Yeah, that's a good point.
[00:14:55]  He's done time, so he's a new man.
[00:14:57]  I did my nickel!
[00:14:59]  Right.
[00:15:00]  So the question comes up of, hey man, are you a journalist?
[00:15:04]  Right.
[00:15:05]  As far as your background, you are a journalist who provides news coverage.
[00:15:09]  I'm a broadcaster, yes.
[00:15:12]  Okay.
[00:15:12]  What I'm referring to is, did you see in your legal papers in this case where it was claimed you were a journalist who provides news coverage?
[00:15:18]  I don't recall what.
[00:15:21]  Identities I was given in any legal papers.
[00:15:23]  You record an internet video show called The War Room?
[00:15:26]  I'm the host of the show, yes.
[00:15:28]  Okay.
[00:15:29]  You have one boss, and that's Alex Jones.
[00:15:34]  You could say that.
[00:15:36]  But Alex Jones doesn't personally oversee your show or pre-approve what you say, right?
[00:15:41]  Not necessarily.
[00:15:43]  And was on the day that we're talking about in this case...
[00:15:47]  The video that you reviewed for May 7, 2023, did Alex Jones personally oversee or tell you what to say?
[00:15:54]  No.
[00:15:56]  You're allowed to say what you want on your show?
[00:15:58]  Yes.
[00:15:59]  You have people working under you on your show that you can give instructions to?
[00:16:03]  Yes.
[00:16:04]  So, just in the opening minutes of this thing, we have Owen refusing to accept the risk of calling himself a journalist, even though his documents identify him as one, and saying that...
[00:16:15]  Everything he puts on his show is under his control.
[00:16:18]  Alex doesn't tell him what to say.
[00:16:19]  He directs his own ship.
[00:16:21]  And so he is a man who is presumably responsible for the content that he puts out.
[00:16:26]  Yeah.
[00:16:27]  Yeah, it is.
[00:16:28]  It's always fun.
[00:16:29]  It's always fun, like, moving into this arena and listening to them try and not say what everybody already knows, obviously.
[00:16:39]  Like, just deny.
[00:16:42]  I don't know if the sun is yellow.
[00:16:45]  I don't know if I'd say Alex is my boss.
[00:16:47]  Yeah, I mean, you know, you could say that.
[00:16:50]  Anybody could say anything, really.
[00:16:52]  And you're like, just, let's go.
[00:16:54]  Come on, man.
[00:16:55]  Just own something.
[00:16:55]  This could take five minutes if you'd just be like, ah, we'll do it.
[00:16:59]  Yeah.
[00:16:59]  So the general strategy that Owen is going to deploy to justify his actions and everything is that they showed a picture of the shooter.
[00:17:13]  But it was just on a piece of paper that was on the desk.
[00:17:15]  Right.
[00:17:15]  And he has no control over that.
[00:17:17]  Sure.
[00:17:18]  It's just there.
[00:17:19]  Right?
[00:17:21]  Okay.
[00:17:21]  Yeah.
[00:17:22]  Okay.
[00:17:24]  Anybody could have put it there.
[00:17:26]  Right.
[00:17:26]  Yeah.
[00:17:27]  I mean, it's like a planted piece of evidence.
[00:17:29]  Yeah.
[00:17:29]  He gets to work and there's all these papers on the desk and that's not his fault.
[00:17:35]  It could have been anybody.
[00:17:36]  Right.
[00:17:36]  Yeah.
[00:17:37]  And so I think he thinks that this is going to be a good defense.
[00:17:41]  But he's immediately countered with the implications of what he's doing.
[00:17:45]  Yeah, obviously.
[00:17:46]  Part of your show involves reviewing news articles and social media posts that have been printed out on paper.
[00:17:56]  Correct?
[00:17:58]  Is that a question?
[00:17:59]  It is.
[00:18:03]  Yeah, that's part of the show.
[00:18:05]  Part of your show involves displaying materials printed out from the internet.
[00:18:10]  That you have never seen, and then commenting on them live.
[00:18:15]  That's happened before.
[00:18:16]  That's not an integral part of the show.
[00:18:18]  That's what happened in this episode, correct?
[00:18:21]  Not exactly, but generally speaking, that's kind of what happened.
[00:18:27]  From what I understand of your affidavit, you reviewed materials on this show relating to my client that you had never seen before.
[00:18:35]  Reviewed what materials?
[00:18:36]  Well, for instance, the photo of my client that we're here about today, you had never seen that before going on air?
[00:18:41]  No.
[00:18:42]  You had never reviewed any of those materials?
[00:18:45]  No, it was just sitting on the desk.
[00:18:46]  And you knew that there would be materials sitting on the desk?
[00:18:49]  Yeah, there are materials sitting on the desk.
[00:18:52]  And you may not have seen them or checked them before?
[00:18:55]  No.
[00:18:56]  So in terms of whether you might end up defaming someone on your show, it's pretty much a Russian roulette situation as far as you're concerned?
[00:19:04]  No.
[00:19:05]  Well, I don't understand.
[00:19:07]  If you have materials on your desk that you haven't checked, how would you know what's in them?
[00:19:12]  They're not my materials.
[00:19:13]  I'm not referencing those materials.
[00:19:15]  I never touched those materials.
[00:19:16]  I never told anybody to put those materials on the air on video.
[00:19:20]  Well, you know they're going to be there.
[00:19:22]  No, I don't know what's going to be there.
[00:19:23]  No, you know exactly.
[00:19:24]  You know that stuff is going to be on your desk and you don't know what it is.
[00:19:28]  Right?
[00:19:29]  Is that right?
[00:19:34]  Yeah, I don't go through the thousands of papers on the desk when I sit down for the Sunday show.
[00:19:39]  I don't have time to.
[00:19:40]  So this is a tough spot for Owen to be in this early.
[00:19:43]  He obviously can't answer in either direction here without taking on really shitty conclusions.
[00:19:49]  If he claims that he reviews all the material that's on the desk, which is the fodder for the show he does, then he would need to own that he bears some responsibility for not fact-checking the picture that was reported on identifying the wrong shooter.
[00:20:01]  In this scenario, he's able to maintain the facade that he's doing a real show that's not just ranting about social media posts he's skimmed, but he also has to accept that he made a mistake here.
[00:20:12]  Conversely, if he claims that he doesn't look at all the prop paper on the desk and has no idea what any of it is then maybe he feels like he can get away with reporting on this incorrect image but it comes at the expense of admitting that his show is really just ranting about social media posts that he barely knows what they are.
[00:20:28]  Take yourself seriously and admit you fucked up or take no responsibility by essentially admitting that your whole game is a fraud.
[00:20:34]  It's quite a pickle that he's accidentally landed himself in and I don't think...
[00:20:39]  When he was saying, I don't know this material, it's just in front of me, I can't have any responsibility for it, I don't think he was expecting Mark to reply with, so it's Russian roulette if you defame somebody, based on what is just randomly in front of you.
[00:20:53]  So it could just be...
[00:20:54]  It could just be crystals today.
[00:20:56]  Oh, they put a bunch of rocks on my desk today.
[00:20:59]  I suppose I'm going to talk about rocks.
[00:21:00]  Fuck, that kind of does follow from the premises that we've established.
[00:21:04]  Shit.
[00:21:04]  Ah, damn it.
[00:21:05]  Okay, so they put a bunch of Greek pots on and I have to try and interpret what the pictures mean in the story format.
[00:21:13]  It's a weird day today, I guess, guys.
[00:21:15]  But that's because we do all the research and we study and we know this stuff backwards and forwards.
[00:21:21]  I love the...
[00:21:23]  I never touched it.
[00:21:24]  Are we into drug sting?
[00:21:26]  Is that what we're doing?
[00:21:28]  I mean, obviously, there was no securing of the scene or anything.
[00:21:33]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:21:34]  But if you dusted those papers for fingerprints, this would be shown to be a lie.
[00:21:39]  You touched those papers.
[00:21:40]  Obviously.
[00:21:41]  Yeah.
[00:21:41]  So this turns into a situation where Mark is asking, so when you have stuff that you don't know if it's true or not in front of you, That's not an ideal source, right?
[00:21:55]  Yeah, that's the trouble.
[00:21:56]  That's not good.
[00:21:57]  Yeah, I don't go through the thousands of papers on the desk when I sit down for the Sunday show.
[00:22:02]  I don't have time to.
[00:22:03]  Right, so when you have a show and part of the basis of your show is to review live materials printed out from the internet that you've never seen, that ain't a great idea.
[00:22:14]  Do you agree with that?
[00:22:16]  Objection form.
[00:22:19]  It's not exactly an ideal situation.
[00:22:21]  But that's the situation I'm in on Sundays.
[00:22:23]  I don't have time to clear the desk.
[00:22:24]  I have basically two minutes to sit down and put a mic on, and that's all I can do on Sunday.
[00:22:29]  So I had nothing to do with those documents.
[00:22:31]  What instructions do you give about the printed-out materials that are going to be used on your show?
[00:22:37]  Are you talking about for this show in question?
[00:22:39]  No, just generally.
[00:22:41]  Well, it's kind of important that there's a distinction being made.
[00:22:44]  On that show, I literally just sit down at the desk.
[00:22:48]  It's the exact same desk where somebody's on air before me.
[00:22:50]  I don't have any time to clear the desk.
[00:22:52]  I don't have any time to review what's on the desk.
[00:22:54]  I don't have any time to put new stuff on the desk.
[00:22:56]  I just have to sit down and go on air.
[00:22:59]  So on a normal circumstance, I have control over the desk.
[00:23:03]  I have control of what's on the desk.
[00:23:04]  In this circumstance, I have none.
[00:23:06]  So on my show, a normal show, I can prepare fake papers.
[00:23:11]  But at this, I have papers on the desk and there's nothing you can do about it on Sundays.
[00:23:16]  I have no time.
[00:23:18]  I love the dynamic that we have always with all of these depositions, which is you ask a question, and then they have some sort of response that's like, obviously I can't do that, idiot!
[00:23:31]  And then it's like, no, you have to.
[00:23:34]  That's your job.
[00:23:35]  Right.
[00:23:36]  You're taking over this shift.
[00:23:39]  You can't...
[00:23:40]  Take paper off the desk?
[00:23:42]  How long does that take?
[00:23:43]  One swoop with your hand across the desk?
[00:23:46]  You don't have time for that?
[00:23:48]  I mean, what?
[00:23:49]  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[00:23:50]  Are you saying that, like, other people do that?
[00:23:52]  Yes!
[00:23:53]  Are you saying that there should be a recycling bin underneath the desk that all this paper can be thrown in?
[00:23:58]  There's just no way to remove things from the desk.
[00:24:01]  No.
[00:24:01]  We laminate it all.
[00:24:02]  Well, maybe this speaks to, like, a bureaucracy that's in place, that they need to go through three different offices and get Signatures to take anything on or off the desk.
[00:24:12]  Maybe they're so opposed to government red tape because they have this insane Byzantine system they have to go through.
[00:24:20]  They just always have this element of like, okay, I am not in a civil trial deposition.
[00:24:28]  I am in a movie courtroom where, like, I can get off on a technicality where it's like, oh, there's some plausible deniability here.
[00:24:37]  You can't guarantee that I put it on the desk.
[00:24:40]  Boom, I'm out.
[00:24:41]  Right, but it's also funny because it's like, that's not even what's at issue here.
[00:24:45]  That's not what we're talking about, man.
[00:24:46]  And also, your explanation that it seems like it's supposed to be such common sense that, like, I have no idea what papers are going to be on the desk when I get...

=== Why Owen Defends His Show (15:17) ===

[00:24:56]  It opens up like, uh, it's not a satisfying excuse.
[00:25:00]  It makes you sound insane.
[00:25:01]  Yeah, no, you realize that what you're doing is insane, right?
[00:25:05]  And they're like, no, what?
[00:25:07]  No, you're dumb.
[00:25:08]  Oh.
[00:25:09]  Woo.
[00:25:10]  So I thought at this point it might be good to actually hear some of the episode that got Owen in trouble because it helps to put into context why he did the things that he did.
[00:25:19]  Understood as it actually happened, Owen was part of a media ecosystem that was desperate to deny that the Alan shooter was a guy with Nazi tattoos who was motivated by the same ideology that underlies their worldview.
[00:25:31]  One of the headlines, particularly on social media after the shooting, was that the guy had Nazi tattoos and Owen felt self-conscious about this.
[00:25:39]  The right-wing dipshit media reacted in lockstep with each other, desperately pushing other explanations for the shooting that didn't touch on the possibility that white supremacy is a real thing.
[00:25:49]  Here was the rant that Owen was in the middle of when he misidentified the shooter, which we'll hear in this clip.
[00:25:56]  But I guess that's the mentality now of a...
[00:26:01]  The mentality now of a left winger.
[00:26:04]  I guess that's the mentality now of a liberal democrat.
[00:26:07]  If you don't like the statistic, then it must be racist.
[00:26:10]  If you see something you don't like, it doesn't matter if it's real or not.
[00:26:14]  It's racist.
[00:26:15]  And that's just how you discount it and hide from it.
[00:26:17]  Like you're afraid of a monster under the bed or there's a monster in your closet, so you hide under the blankets.
[00:26:23]  You can't see it.
[00:26:24]  The monster can't touch me.
[00:26:27]  Yeah, here's your actual interracial violent crime statistics.
[00:26:31]  Here's your actual demographic crime statistics.
[00:26:33]  No!
[00:26:33]  No!
[00:26:34]  Racist!
[00:26:35]  I can't!
[00:26:41]  But then they're the ones that call a Hispanic man a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi.
[00:26:51]  His name was Mauricio Garcia.
[00:26:54]  Your neo-Nazi.
[00:26:57]  White supremacist.
[00:26:59]  But we know now, this is the leftist logic, we now know that it actually has nothing to do with skin color, it has everything to do with politics.
[00:27:11]  So, don't you know, that's why Enrique Tarrio is a white supremacist, you know, the black leader of the Proud Boys, he's a white supremacist.
[00:27:19]  And so is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, he's a white supremacist too.
[00:27:26]  Yes, of course, he's a black man and the first black member of the Supreme Court, and that's why he's a white supremacist, don't you know?
[00:27:32]  Because his politics, his ideology does not perfectly align with the left-wing cult.
[00:27:38]  So as Owen is discussing the shooter, they go to an overhead shot of the papers on the desk showing a prominently displayed mugshot of the plaintiff in this lawsuit who was not the shooter.
[00:27:49]  Owen's defense here seems to be that he can't control what papers are in front of him, and this is a random coincidence, but previously on this show, he could clearly be seen looking through the papers on the desk and weaving their content into his monologue.
[00:28:02]  In the context of the show that's being presented, these aren't just random papers, they're his sources, and the incorrect mugshot is placed directly where the overhead cam is because Owen shuffled the papers around and put it there in order for the camera to pick it up.
[00:28:17]  He can dodge responsibility in a lot of ways and try to maintain his pretend credibility, but there's just no way around it if you watch the video.
[00:28:23]  He engaged with the papers on the desk, treating them as prepared news even though they were just printed off tweets, and he presented the mugshot by putting it in front of the overhead camera.
[00:28:32]  In terms of his organization of what would be in view of the camera...
[00:28:37]  Owen arguably was operating as a producer, putting the prop into the place it needed to be in order to be in the shot.
[00:28:44]  So he's actually, I think he's getting off easy based on what he's being accused of here.
[00:28:51]  Right, right, right.
[00:28:52]  Also, Thurgood Marshall was the first black member of the Supreme Court who Clarence Thomas actually replaced, but I wouldn't expect someone like Owen, who has such a great grasp on all these issues, to know that.
[00:29:01]  I was like, oh man, don't remind me that one of the great crimes of this fucking universe is replacing Thurgood Marshall with Clarence Thomas.
[00:29:12]  Like, truly a travesty of destruction to one of the greatest men that ever lived.
[00:29:19]  If you think that, you know, that's a travesty, then the good news is that Owen has decided to just ignore it.
[00:29:24]  Ignore Thurgood Marshall entirely.
[00:29:26]  Yeah, it never happened.
[00:29:27]  Hey, you know what?
[00:29:28]  That's one way to do it.
[00:29:29]  So, Owen, we get back to the deposition setting.
[00:29:33]  And he is talking more about how he doesn't know anything about these papers that are in front of him.
[00:29:38]  Never seen them before in my life.
[00:29:39]  You certainly have control of the words coming out of your mouth while you're talking on air.
[00:29:43]  Do I?
[00:29:44]  And those, in this case, I think what you're telling me is none of that is pre-planned.
[00:29:47]  You don't have a script.
[00:29:48]  No.
[00:29:49]  So you know that you're going to be encountering materials you've never seen before and reacting to them live, correct?
[00:29:54]  No.
[00:29:56]  You know there's going to be materials on that.
[00:29:59]  Yes.
[00:30:00]  In this specific case, you knew you had never seen them before.
[00:30:03]  Okay.
[00:30:04]  Right?
[00:30:04]  Okay.
[00:30:05]  And then you knew you'd be reacting to them live.
[00:30:07]  No.
[00:30:08]  No.
[00:30:09]  Explain to me why that's not right.
[00:30:11]  Because I don't have to react to anything on the desk.
[00:30:15]  I'm not understanding what you're saying.
[00:30:16]  Your show, from what I understand how it operates, is you have a stack of materials on your desk that are about the news stories of the day.
[00:30:23]  Correct?
[00:30:24]  Yes.
[00:30:24]  And those are that...
[00:30:26]  Dictates kind of what you're going to be talking about on your show or those news stories, right?
[00:30:29]  No.
[00:30:31]  Okay.
[00:30:33]  Can you see the materials on your desk while you're on the show?
[00:30:37]  Yeah, there's a bunch of stacks in front of me.
[00:30:39]  You can see it on the video.
[00:30:39]  That's what I wanted to make sure.
[00:30:41]  Okay, yeah, we can see them.
[00:30:42]  So this is an interesting deflection that Owen is trying to make because on some level, I think he feels like he just pulled like a logic judo move.
[00:30:50]  Mark has established that Owen knows that there will be material on the desk that he's possibly never seen before, and has also established that Owen has control over what he says on the ship.
[00:31:00]  The natural conclusion for this is that he has control over the response that he gives to random, unverified information, which is to say that he made a choice and it led to this defamatory content being broadcast.
[00:31:12]  Owen thinks he can get out of this corner by saying that he's under no obligation to respond to the random papers on his desk as a general rule.
[00:31:20]  He could ignore them entirely and not get into any trouble with Alex or the bosses.
[00:31:25]  What he's trying to do is retain some measure of dignity by creating the impression that some days his show is fully prepared by him before the show and has nothing to do with the litter that Alex just left on the desk.
[00:31:36]  But the problem is in this specific case that they're talking about, Owen did rely on those papers.
[00:31:43]  The idea that he has the freedom to ignore them only makes him more responsible for his actions.
[00:31:48]  This is the kind of thing you see when someone is sort of trained to argue.
[00:31:54]  He knows what it looks like and feels like to make a point, but he doesn't really know how to assess if the point that he's making is good.
[00:32:00]  He just knows that he's now said something that kind of feels like it covers the bases, but more importantly, it puts the ball back in the other person's court.
[00:32:09]  Nine times out of ten, when Owen is arguing with random people on the street, this level of explanation will fly, but in a deposition, you can...
[00:32:17]  See how flailing around he is.
[00:32:19]  Yeah.
[00:32:19]  Like, this is, makes no sense.
[00:32:21]  Yeah.
[00:32:22]  It does not get to the heart of the matter in the conversation that we're actually having here.
[00:32:26]  It just seems...
[00:32:29]  Yeah, it's just a fundamental misunderstanding of where they are and what is happening.
[00:32:34]  Because right now, it's feeling like an interrogation kind of situation where Owen feels like he is being interrogated by the cops.
[00:32:42]  Where he's like, well, I know the cops lie.
[00:32:44]  I know the cops don't have all the information and they want me to incriminate myself.
[00:32:48]  And that's why we have the whole amendment thing.
[00:32:50]  And it's like...
[00:32:51]  But in this scenario, they already know the answers to the questions they are asking.
[00:32:57]  Because there is no other possible answer.
[00:33:00]  For you to then say a different answer just makes everybody spend their whole day here.
[00:33:05]  Well, Ed, it's so weird because, like, I don't think that anybody would not accept an apology and a recognition of, like, you did wrong here.
[00:33:15]  Like, I feel like...
[00:33:17]  This is the easiest bind for Owen to get out of by just saying, we fucked up, made a mistake.
[00:33:25]  The fact that they have to go through these, like, I had nothing to do with the papers, and all this, is only because of the inability to admit wrongdoing.
[00:33:34]  Totally.
[00:33:34]  And that's what's weird about it.
[00:33:36]  That's the part that's very surreal and turns it into an interrogation.
[00:33:40]  It's Owen's refusal to just accept a baseline of responsibility.
[00:33:46]  Yeah!
[00:33:46]  Yeah, it is funny in a sense of Owen is more fine with consequences being going to jail than he is with just being like, yeah, I fucked up.
[00:33:58]  Like, that's the consequence.
[00:34:01]  Well, I think that the going to jail inflates and plays into his pride, ego, and character.
[00:34:07]  Totally.
[00:34:08]  Look, we've fucked up, we got the wrong picture, and, you know, we're trying to do better in the future.
[00:34:12]  I think that works against his ego and pride and character.
[00:34:16]  Of course!
[00:34:16]  So, it's pretty much that simple.
[00:34:18]  Right!
[00:34:18]  It's fascinating, just in a sense of, like, how warped people's brains can truly become.
[00:34:24]  And also, what's the point of jail?
[00:34:27]  It's crazy.
[00:34:28]  Yeah.
[00:34:28]  So, Owen's like, hey man, I've never met those papers.
[00:34:32]  I don't know them.
[00:34:33]  Yeah, I mean, I've never seen that guy before in my life.
[00:34:35]  We've never spoke.
[00:34:36]  Totally.
[00:34:37]  Can you see the materials on your desk while you're on the show?
[00:34:40]  Yeah, there's a bunch of stacks in front of me.
[00:34:42]  You can see it on the video.
[00:34:43]  That's what I wanted to make sure.
[00:34:44]  When we go to the InfoWars document camera, right, that's above the desk, that's a view directly in front of you.
[00:34:52]  Those papers aren't on some other desk.
[00:34:54]  That's the desk right in front of you.
[00:34:55]  Yes.
[00:34:55]  Okay.
[00:34:59]  Who...
[00:34:59]  Well, first of all, do you know who you had select materials for that show?
[00:35:05]  Nobody, probably.
[00:35:06]  But no, I don't know.
[00:35:08]  You don't know how they got to your desk?
[00:35:10]  My guess is the show before prints out all this stuff and puts it on the desk for the host before me.
[00:35:17]  That's how they got on the desk.
[00:35:19]  Who's the host before you?
[00:35:20]  Alex Jones.
[00:35:21]  Okay.
[00:35:22]  So you don't have any idea who printed out those materials for his show?
[00:35:26]  No, I'm not there.
[00:35:27]  I get there after he's done.
[00:35:29]  So the materials that are there on your desk...
[00:35:32]  Are not even checked by any member of your staff?
[00:35:36]  No, I don't have a staff for that show.
[00:35:38]  I just inherit the staff that's already there.
[00:35:41]  Gotcha.
[00:35:42]  So before going on air, you don't do anything yourself to ensure that any of the materials on your desk are accurate or appropriate for the show?
[00:35:50]  Objection form.
[00:35:52]  I don't really reference them.
[00:35:55]  I don't touch them.
[00:35:55]  I don't pick them up.
[00:35:56]  They're just there.
[00:35:57]  So this seems like it would be a good dodge, but it relies on the person talking to Owen, not knowing anything and having not prepared.
[00:36:04]  If you watch the show that this suit is based on prior to this point, Owen has literally been handling the papers on the desk, reorganizing them, looking through them for things to talk.
[00:36:15]  I think what he wants to say is that this show isn't...
[00:36:21]  Just him randomly riffing off paper that Alex left on the desk.
[00:36:25]  And that's fine if he wants to say that to preserve his ego.
[00:36:28]  But the problem is, in this specific case in question, there's video of him using the papers on the desk for the basis of his show.
[00:36:36]  In this instance, him trying to use this as a defense just looks silly.
[00:36:39]  It makes it too obvious that the reason he's being defensive about this is because if he doesn't, he'd kind of have to admit that there really isn't anything more behind his show.
[00:36:48]  The illusion of the show is predicated on needing to pretend that they're taking this seriously.
[00:36:53]  It would be a lot harder to sell the audience on the idea that you're fighting the literal devil if they knew that all you're really doing is a racist meme recap show.
[00:37:01]  And I think that protecting that kayfabe is more important to Owen than not looking like...
[00:37:08]  It's so strange to me.
[00:37:12]  Because to me, even if you are going to do this waste of everybody's time and not just be like, eh, fucked up, then you pin it on Alex.
[00:37:21]  Sure.
[00:37:21]  He already owes a billion dollars.
[00:37:23]  Oh, it's a drop in the bucket.
[00:37:25]  Oh, it's Alex's fault.
[00:37:26]  Like, yeah.
[00:37:27]  I just don't understand why you don't just...
[00:37:29]  Because it's ego.
[00:37:31]  It's just his ego.
[00:37:32]  And it's Alex's ego.
[00:37:33]  Alex is like, hey, don't pin this on me.
[00:37:35]  Why not?
[00:37:36]  Alex might barbecue him.
[00:37:37]  Exactly!
[00:37:38]  That's the issue.
[00:37:39]  Alex might murder him.
[00:37:40]  Why can't we be smart for five seconds today, guys?
[00:37:44]  I don't know, but I think that the people that Owen is probably used to talking to, he could say, I never touched those papers, and they would be like, I guess if he said he never touched the papers, maybe he didn't.
[00:37:56]  But if you're dealing with lawyers who are suing you over this, they watched your episode.
[00:38:01]  Yeah.
[00:38:01]  They know you're lying.
[00:38:02]  Yeah.
[00:38:02]  You know you're lying.
[00:38:04]  Yeah.
[00:38:05]  It's not the cops picking you up off of a regular-ass sweep, just being like, hey, do you know who did this?
[00:38:11]  It's not that.
[00:38:12]  They know you.
[00:38:13]  And I think at some point, Owen has to recognize, based on how little confrontation is coming, that this is kind of not an information-gathering exercise, and more a, like, aren't-your-answers-embarrassing kind of, like, exercise.
[00:38:33]  We've been here before.
[00:38:35]  Yeah.
[00:38:36]  Right?
[00:38:36]  It feels...
[00:38:37]  There's an element of scoldiness to it.
[00:38:40]  Yeah.
[00:38:41]  Absolutely.
[00:38:42]  Of course.
[00:38:43]  So, a policy that Kit Daniels put out about how they need to...
[00:38:49]  Whenever they're going to put out news that accuses someone of a crime, they need to have backup.
[00:38:54]  Okay.
[00:38:54]  Double-check that stuff.
[00:38:55]  Good call, Kit.
[00:38:56]  So that comes up, and we get Owen's thoughts on it.
[00:38:59]  Okay.
[00:39:00]  All right, Mr. Sean, I can interview what has been marked as Exhibit 1. This is an email of Kit Daniels.
[00:39:06]  We were talking about he's a co-worker of yours.
[00:39:08]  Was.
[00:39:09]  Was a co-worker of yours.
[00:39:12]  Was he a co-worker of yours last summer in 2023?
[00:39:16]  I don't think I've seen Kit Daniels in maybe over a year.
[00:39:22]  The subject of this email is new editorial policy for all reporters, journalists, and writers.
[00:39:28]  Do you see that at the top?
[00:39:29]  Mm-hmm.
[00:39:30]  Okay.
[00:39:31]  It was sent on June 7, 2018.
[00:39:33]  You see that?
[00:39:34]  Mm-hmm.
[00:39:35]  At that time, you were hosting a show as a journalist?
[00:39:40]  I was a host.
[00:39:42]  I don't know about the term journalist applying here.
[00:39:47]  When it says it applies to reporters, journalists, and writers, do you think this policy applies to you?
[00:39:54]  I don't know.
[00:39:55]  This could have been meant for the writers.

=== Mr. Schreier's Dilemma (05:27) ===

[00:39:57]  I do not know.
[00:39:59]  Well, it was sent to you, wasn't it?
[00:40:02]  Kid Daniels was never my managing editor.
[00:40:04]  Well, I'm asking who it was sent to.
[00:40:06]  It was sent to InfoWars staff.
[00:40:08]  And that goes to you, right?
[00:40:11]  I think so.
[00:40:12]  The policy says any news story published or promoted by InfoWars that deals with the possibility of a crime being committed or criminal accusations in general must be checked by multiple editors before publication, whether it be a video report or a written article.
[00:40:29]  This also includes headlines as well as the content of the report.
[00:40:32]  This policy will help ensure that reports are free of inaccurate and misleading statements that invite legal problems for the company.
[00:40:40]  You agree that this policy existed before the show that we're here to talk about today?
[00:40:45]  Yes.
[00:40:47]  Has anyone ever said to you since 2018, Mr. Schroyer, this policy is no longer in effect?
[00:40:56]  Criminal allegations that you make on your show don't need to be checked by multiple editors?
[00:41:01]  No.
[00:41:03]  Do you remember what happened to cause the creation of this policy?
[00:41:06]  No.
[00:41:08]  Oh, you don't?
[00:41:09]  Do you remember that shortly before this email, your co-worker Kit Daniels published an innocent person's photo as the Parkland shooter?
[00:41:16]  No.
[00:41:17]  Are you familiar with the lawsuit that resulted from those events?
[00:41:22]  Not off the top of my head.
[00:41:24]  Have you heard the name Marcel Fontaine?
[00:41:27]  Sounds familiar.
[00:41:28]  See, this is a bad situation for Owen to be in, because obviously he remembers this stuff, and he's answering no, because if he answers yes, then he's going to be asked, what happened there?
[00:41:43]  And Owen doesn't want to have to say it himself.
[00:41:45]  So he thinks he's avoiding something by being like, I...
[00:41:50]  No, I don't remember.
[00:41:52]  Vaguely, I don't know, rings a bell or whatever.
[00:41:55]  Yeah.
[00:41:55]  Except, like, this is something that might work in a social situation.
[00:42:02]  Yeah.
[00:42:02]  But when you're in a deposition, if you answer no, you're going to be reminded.
[00:42:07]  Yep.
[00:42:08]  This is because this policy got put in place because you guys misidentified a shooter.
[00:42:14]  Yep.
[00:42:14]  And it got you in trouble, got you sued.
[00:42:16]  Like this situation right here that we are in.
[00:42:18]  Yeah, or that other time you did that.
[00:42:20]  Oh, yeah?
[00:42:21]  Do you remember in May 2022, a year before this episode we're talking about, that you published the photo of an innocent woman saying that she was the Uvalde Elementary School shooter?
[00:42:34]  No.
[00:42:34]  Okay.
[00:42:36]  I want to see if we can refresh your memory on that.
[00:43:01]  Yes, go ahead and give that to Mr. Schreier.
[00:43:04]  Mr. Schreier, I've handed you what's been marked as Exhibit 2. This is a CNN article that was published on KTVZ Oregon.
[00:43:14]  The title of this article is False Right Conspiracists Claim the Uvalde Shooter Was a Trans Woman, and I'd like to direct your attention to the highlighted portion on page two.
[00:43:24]  Do you see that?
[00:43:25]  Yeah.
[00:43:26]  Okay, I'm going to read that portion really quick, and you can read along with me.
[00:43:29]  It says, Jones told the caller he had a photo of Ramos wearing a skirt.
[00:43:34]  Later in the episode, he shared a tweet from Andy Ngo that asked people to stop claiming that the images of people in skirts being circulated are Ramos.
[00:43:43]  Because none of those images had been confirmed to be the shooter.
[00:43:47]  Jones co-host Owen Schroyer said, I just want to be clear, the images we've been talking about are not the ones that we've been sharing.
[00:43:54]  We've been sharing the images that are on his Instagram account that is claimed to be his.
[00:43:59]  The Instagram account that Schroyer mentioned was a spoof account that has since been taken down.
[00:44:03]  Does this refresh your memory that in 2022 you spread the false image of a mass shooter?
[00:44:10]  Vaguely.
[00:44:11]  But I don't know.
[00:44:12]  I mean, claiming I spread a false image, this is just a quote.
[00:44:16]  It doesn't show any images.
[00:44:17]  It doesn't give any context.
[00:44:18]  So I'm not admitting to that.
[00:44:21]  Right.
[00:44:21]  That's what I'm asking, though.
[00:44:22]  Does it refresh your memory that you did spread the photo of this innocent woman as you've already shared?
[00:44:27]  Objection form.
[00:44:28]  I remember the general incident.
[00:44:33]  Did you learn anything from that?
[00:44:37]  No.
[00:44:38]  Nope.
[00:44:39]  Certainly not.
[00:44:40]  Objection.
[00:44:41]  Mean.
[00:44:44]  So we've, I don't know, illustrated a pattern of you personally and you Infowars as a company doing this pretty regularly to the detriment of people's lives.
[00:44:56]  Did you learn anything?
[00:44:59]  Nope.
[00:45:00]  Definitely not.
[00:45:01]  Yeah, you know, there's something about that where it reminds me of a...
[00:45:07]  Sarah Jewett, who is a writer from Maine in the late 19th, early 20th century.

=== Feel Bad About Fish Video (15:42) ===

[00:45:16]  And she's writing about school at the time, which is a teenage girl and five young boys.
[00:45:24]  And it makes me think, I know that school punishment is bad.
[00:45:31]  But man, if he had been hit like they were in the time, maybe we wouldn't be here.
[00:45:36]  I don't know.
[00:45:37]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:45:37]  Like, I don't know.
[00:45:38]  I don't know if corporal punishment is the answer.
[00:45:40]  I don't think it's the answer.
[00:45:41]  I'm just saying we wouldn't be here.
[00:45:43]  I think that there's something very illuminating and illustrative about this.
[00:45:51]  Like, all right, here is this exact parallel situation to what we are here to talk about that you did previously.
[00:45:59]  Yep.
[00:46:00]  And, like, the way that Owen is unable to engage, but also completely unable to deny the reality of, like, he can't just say, I didn't do any of that.
[00:46:11]  He has to be like, I vaguely remember and I will not confess to this.
[00:46:16]  One of our oldest...
[00:46:18]  Such a coward.
[00:46:19]  One of our oldest parenting idioms is the idea of if you let the kid touch the fire, he will learn not to touch the fire.
[00:46:27]  You are somehow incapable of learning not to touch the fire.
[00:46:31]  How is this possible, sir?
[00:46:33]  I think because they have not felt the consequences of the fire.
[00:46:37]  I mean, there's really no other way to put it, right?
[00:46:40]  Yeah.
[00:46:40]  So, Owen, at this point, has been confronted with this past record of behaving in this exact way.
[00:46:47]  He's tried to excuse his behavior as like, I've never met paper before.
[00:46:51]  Right.
[00:46:52]  And I think he now realizes he needs to switch his approach.
[00:46:57]  Let's talk about your coverage of the Allen, Texas mass shooting in the summer of 2023.
[00:47:03]  I saw that it was claimed in your legal papers that you claimed that you published a widely reported and disseminated mugshot.
[00:47:11]  Is that accurate?
[00:47:13]  That is the image that you are referring to.
[00:47:17]  Other than you, where was it reported prior to your show on May 7th?
[00:47:22]  Well, it is obviously on...
[00:47:24]  The Twitter account that is sitting on the desk that I've noticed is not mentioned in the lawsuit.
[00:47:30]  And then, obviously, all the other defendants who are here probably disseminated the same image and, I'm sure, plenty of other people.
[00:47:39]  Do you know if any of them did it before or after you?
[00:47:42]  No.
[00:47:43]  Okay, so you've read the lawsuit, I take it, because you just commented on it, right?
[00:47:48]  Yes.
[00:47:48]  Okay, so you would know from that lawsuit that none of your co-defendants published it before you, right?
[00:47:54]  I don't know.
[00:47:55]  Okay.
[00:47:56]  And then we have this Twitter account.
[00:47:58]  Mm-hmm.
[00:47:59]  Right?
[00:48:00]  King Koa the Great.
[00:48:01]  So this excuse doesn't make a lot of sense based on Owen's previous excuse.
[00:48:06]  He shouldn't need to claim that this was a widely reported mugshot if he didn't engage with the random paper that's on his desk.
[00:48:12]  He didn't use the mugshot, so who cares how widely reported it was?
[00:48:17]  Yeah.
[00:48:17]  Owen is acting like this because the legal strategy is basically to just be really defensive and see if anything sticks.
[00:48:23]  The I-have-no-idea-where-the-paper-comes-from defense clearly isn't enough, and so now he's just trying to justify his actions by saying, all the cool kids were reporting on this, so it wasn't just me.
[00:48:33]  This is a great moment that illustrates a dynamic of InfoWars that really cuts through their facade.
[00:48:38]  They're supposed to be the tip of the spear, the only ones who truly see through the media manipulation.
[00:48:43]  They're the independent thinkers, and their analysis is better than everyone else because they're inspired by God.
[00:48:48]  This is their kayfabe persona.
[00:48:50]  But when they do something wrong and want to get out of trouble, all of a sudden they're just part of the crowd.
[00:48:55]  All these other places were spreading this fake information, so why are we the ones who are getting in trouble for it?
[00:49:00]  And this really demonstrates an underlying immaturity that these folks operate with.
[00:49:04]  There's not much difference, honestly, between Owen and a high school bully other than that Owen wears a suit.
[00:49:10]  100%.
[00:49:11]  This is all childish refusal to accept responsibility.
[00:49:15]  And it's really interesting to see.
[00:49:20]  Because I think Owen embodies it so strongly.
[00:49:23]  I mean, it might as well just be like, oh, it's fun to play cops and robbers, but I don't want to be in trouble for robbing stuff.
[00:49:34]  That's not cool.
[00:49:35]  It feels good to pretend to be one of those pioneering fight-fight journalists, but I'm a tiny little loser on the inside.
[00:49:44]  Yeah, it's fun to yell at people and be the cuck destroyer.
[00:49:48]  It's not so fun to...
[00:49:51]  I have to, you know, be talked about how you misidentify mass shooters.
[00:49:56]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:49:57]  No, it is a lot in this arena.
[00:49:59]  There is a consistent underlying feeling of like, hey, man, why are you making me feel bad?
[00:50:04]  Right?
[00:50:05]  Like, don't make me feel bad.
[00:50:07]  Don't pierce the illusion.
[00:50:08]  I like the illusion.
[00:50:09]  Yeah, don't make me feel bad.
[00:50:11]  Alex left those papers on the desk.
[00:50:13]  Don't care.
[00:50:14]  Don't make me feel bad.
[00:50:15]  Other people said it too.
[00:50:16]  We all know I'm full of shit.
[00:50:19]  Yeah.
[00:50:19]  But we don't have to say it all the time.
[00:50:22]  Yeah.
[00:50:22]  There is a very strong defensiveness that just runs through this.
[00:50:26]  And so the idea of using anonymous tweets as a source came up in that last clip.
[00:50:32]  Yep.
[00:50:32]  And that's explored a little more.
[00:50:34]  All right.
[00:50:34]  I've shown you what's been marked as Exhibit 3. This is a screenshot from the video of your May 7th show.
[00:50:43]  This is the tweet that you were talking about that was sitting on your desk?
[00:50:46]  Mm-hmm.
[00:50:47]  Okay.
[00:50:48]  This King Koa the Great account on Twitter.
[00:50:52]  You know that person's identity?
[00:50:54]  No.
[00:50:55]  That person's completely anonymous to you?
[00:50:58]  Yes.
[00:50:59]  That's, as a source, that's not ideal.
[00:51:03]  Not my source.
[00:51:04]  As a source, that's not ideal.
[00:51:07]  Okay.
[00:51:08]  Correct?
[00:51:09]  Okay.
[00:51:10]  I'm not asking you to say okay.
[00:51:11]  You're not asking me a question.
[00:51:13]  I am.
[00:51:14]  I'm asking you.
[00:51:15]  As a source, an anonymous account that you don't know the identity of is not ideal.
[00:51:21]  Not ideal.
[00:51:26]  It shows a picture here and you'll notice that it says booked in Dallas County, Texas for unknown.
[00:51:38]  Do you see that?
[00:51:39]  Okay, so first of all, at this time, on May 7th, you knew the shooter wasn't booked for the shooting.
[00:51:45]  You knew that, right?
[00:51:47]  I don't recall what I knew or didn't know at the time.
[00:51:50]  So one of the reasons that this is coming up is that the shooter was killed on the scene.
[00:51:55]  Right.
[00:51:55]  And so this booking photo of the...
[00:51:59]  There's reasons why anybody...
[00:52:01]  They should never have made it through people's filters.
[00:52:04]  Right.
[00:52:04]  To ever get on air in the first place.
[00:52:06]  Right.
[00:52:07]  And so that's what Mark is getting at there, is like, you would know that this person was there.
[00:52:12]  I don't know what I knew.
[00:52:14]  So Owen has to get defensive about being asked about using anonymous tweets as a source because on some level, he knows that there isn't much more to his show than that.
[00:52:22]  This person, Kenkoa the Great, is a QAnon weirdo who interacts with Elon Musk a bunch, which raised their profile in the dipshit media space.
[00:52:30]  So, Owen...
[00:52:31]  Covers them a bit.
[00:52:32]  Yeah.
[00:52:33]  Owen already used a different printed out tweet from this same account earlier in the show, which was just a racist meme about crime statistics.
[00:52:40]  Cool.
[00:52:40]  Which we heard a little bit of.
[00:52:42]  We heard a little bit of that.
[00:52:43]  That was another Cancola the Great tweet.
[00:52:44]  Great.
[00:52:45]  Love it.
[00:52:45]  Yeah.
[00:52:46]  Owen knows that pulling at the thread of using random tweets as sources would end up leading to the sweater unraveling entirely.
[00:52:52]  Also, Owen absolutely knew that the Allen shooter was dead when he was on air that day.
[00:52:59]  Yeah.
[00:52:59]  Here is a clip from the show.
[00:53:01]  So the American media, that's the problem we're having, love to foment the racial divide.
[00:53:06]  They love to cause tension.
[00:53:13]  And then they hate white people so much.
[00:53:18]  There is the mass shooter that is a Hispanic individual.
[00:53:22]  That's really all we know at this point.
[00:53:24]  We could make assumptions because of the tattoos that we've seen on the body.
[00:53:32]  And it does appear to be a prison gang.
[00:53:35]  Tattoo.
[00:53:36]  A cartel gang tattoo on his hand.
[00:53:38]  So the B-roll that's playing while Owen discusses the tattoo on the shooter's hand is of the shooter dead on the ground.
[00:53:45]  Owen knows the shooter was killed when he's on air.
[00:53:47]  He just knows that if he admits that, it makes it all the more egregious that he didn't realize the mugshot he was presenting was the wrong person.
[00:53:54]  He didn't care that it was the wrong person because he was just trying to find a counter-narrative to the idea that the actual shooter was a racist Nazi because that's critical to their business model staying respectable.
[00:54:05]  Understood in the larger context, Owen thinks that he's giving defensive, evasive answers to these questions, but it seems like he doesn't realize how much more damning what he's saying is than just, I made a big mistake and I'm really sorry about how careless we were that day.
[00:54:19]  That would be so much more acceptable than what he's trying to...
[00:54:24]  Pass off here.
[00:54:25]  It's absurd.
[00:54:26]  Yeah.
[00:54:26]  You ever see this guy before?
[00:54:27]  No.
[00:54:28]  Never.
[00:54:29]  Here's a picture of you standing next to him after catching a fish.
[00:54:32]  But we never talked.
[00:54:34]  Here's a recorded conversation of the two of you talking about catching said fish.
[00:54:38]  I mean, you can't prove that was us.
[00:54:40]  This is a video of you having this recorded conversation about the goddamn fish!
[00:54:46]  You plotting against the fish.
[00:54:48]  Yep.
[00:54:49]  So this next clip is grim.
[00:54:53]  I believe that.
[00:54:54]  I think that it's one of the sadder kind of moments that I think...
[00:55:00]  I don't know if I believe...
[00:55:02]  I kind of do, though.
[00:55:03]  Okay.
[00:55:04]  And that's what makes me sad.
[00:55:05]  Now I'm excited.
[00:55:06]  You see, it shows a watermark for a website, right?
[00:55:09]  It says recentlybooked.com.
[00:55:10]  Yeah, I see that.
[00:55:11]  OK.
[00:55:12]  Let's work that.
[00:55:33]  I've found you what's been marked as Exhibit 4, and I want you to take a look at the listing on recentlybooked.com.
[00:55:39]  Did you ever visit this webpage?
[00:55:41]  Nope.
[00:55:42]  Did you ever ask anyone to do that?
[00:55:43]  Nope.
[00:55:44]  Do you see where it says age 35?
[00:55:46]  Yep.
[00:55:47]  Seeing that would have caused doubt that this was an image of a 33-year-old shooter, right?
[00:55:53]  Sure.
[00:55:56]  You would agree that before you discuss a photo on your show, allegedly showing a mass murderer, You need to ensure that reasonable steps were taken to verify its accuracy.
[00:56:07]  I was not discussing this photo.
[00:56:08]  I had nothing to do with the printing of this photo.
[00:56:10]  I had nothing to do with this photo ending up on my desk.
[00:56:13]  I had nothing to do with anything being highlighted in this photo.
[00:56:15]  I had nothing to do with this.
[00:56:16]  I never asked it to be put on the screen.
[00:56:18]  As I said in my affidavit.
[00:56:20]  And you shouldn't have let that happen, should you?
[00:56:22]  There's nothing I can do.
[00:56:22]  I don't have control over it.
[00:56:25]  I'm not understanding.
[00:56:27]  No, you are understanding.
[00:56:28]  No, I am.
[00:56:28]  I asked you earlier.
[00:56:29]  You have people who work under you.
[00:56:31]  You can give instructions to me.
[00:56:32]  And did I tell anybody to put that image on the screen?
[00:56:34]  Don't you think you should have instructed people not to put anonymous images on your desk?
[00:56:38]  Objection form.
[00:56:40]  My boss puts it on the desk or somebody puts it on the desk for him?
[00:56:43]  What am I supposed to do?
[00:56:44]  There's nothing I can do.
[00:56:45]  I'm not sure where you're getting that your boss put it on your desk.
[00:56:48]  Don't you tell me that you had no idea who put it on your desk?
[00:56:51]  So, okay, so I don't know who put it on my desk.
[00:56:52]  It wasn't me.
[00:56:53]  You walked into a studio.
[00:56:54]  Got onto a show, to a large audience, and started talking about materials you'd never seen.
[00:57:00]  You wasn't talking about that material.
[00:57:03]  Aren't you sure?
[00:57:04]  We have a video of you talking about it.
[00:57:05]  You have a video of me talking about a mass shooting, which was a story that happens to be the same name as this guy.
[00:57:12]  Oh my god.
[00:57:13]  Right, you understand when you're looking at this image right here.
[00:57:16]  That this is a screenshot of your show.
[00:57:19]  You understand your viewers saw this, right?
[00:57:21]  I'm the host of a show on Free Speech Systems by Infowars.
[00:57:24]  I had nothing to do with that image being on the desk or on the screen.
[00:57:27]  Right, and you have the ability, if you want, to give instructions to the members of your staff about what materials should be on your desk, don't you?
[00:57:37]  Well, actually, I am supposed to leave the materials on the desk because the host, whose desk it is, likes his stuff to stay on the desk.
[00:57:47]  So no, I can't just clear out all the material.
[00:57:50]  So in other words, whether you might, you know you're getting on a show to talk to a bunch of people, and whether you might end up saying something proper or improper is dependent on the materials that were left on the desk by Alex Jones.
[00:58:04]  I don't like it when you put it that way.
[00:58:06]  I mean, yes, that is exactly what I said, just word it in a way that, you know, sometimes you use words in a way that makes me feel bad.
[00:58:13]  There's something so...
[00:58:15]  Depressing about the sentence and back and forth of, like, Owen has exhausted all of his, like, okay, how can I explain this?
[00:58:23]  Yep.
[00:58:24]  Oh, wait, maybe I don't have the power to remove paper from the desk.
[00:58:28]  Maybe Alex doesn't let me remove paper from the desk.
[00:58:31]  Yeah, we've started at, you have control over what you're saying, and we've ended at, I can't remove paper from the desk.
[00:58:39]  Because Alex will be upset.
[00:58:40]  Yep.
[00:58:41]  He likes his papers to stay on the desk.
[00:58:44]  For other people's shows.
[00:58:45]  You know, and it is the same thing as with an interrogation.
[00:58:49]  Because they're turning it into an interrogation, they only wind up revealing information that you don't have to reveal.
[00:58:56]  Yeah, and it's such a crapshoot for me in terms of believing if that's true.
[00:59:02]  Totally.
[00:59:02]  It seems like a very strange thing to be able to make up on the spot.
[00:59:06]  Yeah.
[00:59:06]  But it also seems such a bizarre social work environment.
[00:59:10]  If that is something that Alex, like, you know, don't take the papers off the desk.
[00:59:14]  Alex will be mad.
[00:59:15]  Yeah.
[00:59:16]  It's a testament to how things are.
[00:59:19]  That it's like, I would at least put that at 60-40 true.
[00:59:23]  You know?
[00:59:24]  Nah.
[00:59:24]  Whether or not it is true, don't know.
[00:59:26]  But we are living in a space where that is more likely to be true than not true.
[00:59:31]  Yeah.
[00:59:31]  And it also seems like if you're somebody who respects himself and works in media, you should quit.
[00:59:37]  If that's the work environment you're in, that's an unacceptable work environment.
[00:59:41]  I can't move papers from my desk is not something I would say at any job without going, and now I'm going to leave.
[00:59:50]  Yeah, this is indicative of a much larger problem.
[00:59:52]  Yeah, there's no way that this gets better than, you can't move papers!
[00:59:57]  Yeah, it's a symptom.
[00:59:59]  So, uh, this next clip I think is, uh, fantastic.
[01:00:02]  And, uh, it's Owen, uh, trying to lash out a little bit.
[01:00:06]  Good.
[01:00:06]  And then running straight into a wall.
[01:00:09]  Ooh.
[01:00:10]  I want to make sure that we're clear that you did nothing to ensure that photographs used during your broadcast were accurate.
[01:00:19]  Objection form.
[01:00:23]  I had nothing to do with that photo on the desk or on the screen.
[01:00:30]  During a breaking news event, you should only discuss to your audience and publish to your audience the image of an alleged mass murder if the image was confirmed using a primary source.

=== Acknowledging Mistakes (15:28) ===

[01:00:42]  Would you agree with that?
[01:00:43]  I had nothing to do with the publishing of that image.
[01:00:46]  Not what I asked you, Mr. Shaw.
[01:00:49]  You want me to ask it again?
[01:00:51]  Yeah, go ahead.
[01:00:51]  Okay.
[01:00:53]  During a breaking news event, you should only discuss or publish an image of a mass alleged shooter If the image was confirmed using a primary source, do you agree with that?
[01:01:03]  Yes.
[01:01:05]  I want to talk about your use of anonymous materials, how you approach that, okay?
[01:01:11]  And certainly you recall the time on your show when you used an anonymous blog about a Sandy Hook parent named Neil Heslin.
[01:01:20]  Do you remember that?
[01:01:23]  It's funny, because these anonymous accounts that you always bring up as the basis for my lawsuits never end up...
[01:01:29]  In a lawsuit with you.
[01:01:30]  That is interesting, right?
[01:01:31]  Yeah, it is.
[01:01:32]  Yeah, it is interesting how the professional commercial journalist has a duty that's different than a random person on Twitter.
[01:01:38]  Would you agree with that?
[01:01:40]  Well, I don't know.
[01:01:41]  That's all about interpretation, I suppose.
[01:01:43]  No, I'm asking you.
[01:01:44]  You're in the industry.
[01:01:45]  I'm asking you about the standard of care in your industry.
[01:01:47]  Do you think your standard of care, talking to your audience, is any different than a random, anonymous person on Twitter who's not a commercial media person?
[01:01:54]  Do you believe that?
[01:01:56]  I'm not sure.
[01:01:57]  Ooh, there's the wall.
[01:01:59]  So this is another great moment that you could really dissect for hours.
[01:02:04]  Like, Alex talks about these moments that he has that are like, I could teach a class on this.
[01:02:08]  And I feel like I could teach a class on that.
[01:02:10]  I agree.
[01:02:10]  It contains something that I think is quintessential about people like Owen.
[01:02:14]  and if you can see it, you can never really look at them as a respectable person again.
[01:02:18]  He's very clearly being led down a path where he has no choice but to admit that he put in no effort into verifying this mugshot, and in the process, the plaintiff was misidentified as a mass murderer to Owen's audience.
[01:02:29]  And at this point in the deposition, Mark has identified at least one other incident where Owen did the exact same thing, in the case of Uvalde, and another incident where using unverified stories on air led to him defaming Sandy Hook patriarchs.
[01:02:42]  This is a very clear and well-illustrated pattern of behavior connecting Owen's actions to their effects.
[01:02:49]  Owen can understand words, so he knows that he's in a real bind here, which leads to him Yeah.
[01:03:10]  Owen thinks this is a dunk and it's going to lead to him gaining the upper hand in the conversation.
[01:03:14]  But he seems to have no idea that this only leads to a more damning follow-up question.
[01:03:20]  Owen has no conception that saying these random Twitter accounts don't get sued could possibly lead to, do you think you have more journalistic duties than a random Twitter account?
[01:03:29]  Owen thought he was going to evade this line of questioning entirely and point the finger at someone else, but instead, he ended up tripping over his own feet, and now he has to answer a yes or no question.
[01:03:38]  About whether he's more legitimate than a random Twitter account.
[01:03:42]  If he says yes, he's accepting the premise that he fucked up with this mugshot.
[01:03:46]  If he says no, then he's accepting that his work is meaningless and you shouldn't take anything more from it than a tweet.
[01:03:53]  That's how serious this is or real any other shit is.
[01:03:57]  It's a fucking fake pictured Twitter account.
[01:04:00]  It's a tough spot he's landed in.
[01:04:02]  And you can tell that he doesn't want to accept either of these positions.
[01:04:06]  And so he does the only thing that could be worse.
[01:04:09]  He doesn't know if he, as a journalist and major talk show host working for God's chosen soldier fighting the literal devil, he doesn't know if he has a higher standard of credibility to maintain than a random person on Twitter.
[01:04:24]  That's absurd, and there's no way he doesn't feel like that's an awful way to answer that question.
[01:04:29]  I like that there wasn't a follow-up to ask more there, too, because by just letting Owen's answer of, I don't know, sit there, it makes him look that much more stupid.
[01:04:40]  It's crazy, that moment.
[01:04:42]  Yep.
[01:04:43]  I mean, if I'm...
[01:04:48]  Okay, let me try and put it this way.
[01:04:53]  I have never been in a deposition.
[01:04:55]  I have only listened to clips of these depositions.
[01:04:59]  I feel as though I have learned more about depositions than all of the Infowars people.
[01:05:07]  Who have been in them, as well as their lawyers.
[01:05:10]  Because I feel like if I'm preparing Owen for a deposition, the first thing I say is, have you listened to some of your old depositions?
[01:05:18]  Let's kind of look through those and see where we made mistakes.
[01:05:21]  Check out some of the game tape.
[01:05:22]  Absolutely!
[01:05:23]  How do you not do that?
[01:05:25]  I don't know.
[01:05:26]  And then you just say, oh, so when he asks you those questions where you're like, I've got an answer, you don't.
[01:05:34]  Just say no.
[01:05:35]  Right.
[01:05:35]  Or you think there's a moment where you're going to flip the script?
[01:05:38]  You're not.
[01:05:39]  You're not going to win an arm wrestle.
[01:05:42]  This is not an arm wrestling competition.
[01:05:44]  Right.
[01:05:45]  And I think the issue is that Owen is used to existing in spaces where he's just yelling at somebody at a protest in front of an iPhone or whatever.
[01:05:53]  And oftentimes you can catch them off guard and sort of overwhelm them and badger them with stuff like, hey, why do I get in trouble but this Twitter user doesn't?
[01:06:04]  And maybe they'll be flustered by this.
[01:06:06]  Yeah.
[01:06:06]  Or if you're on your show.
[01:06:08]  And there is nobody to respond to you.
[01:06:10]  And you're just saying that it feels good.
[01:06:13]  And there's no pushback.
[01:06:14]  But when you're in a situation like this and you try those same tactics, they're just not going to work.
[01:06:19]  And you're going to end up in deeper water than you were in originally.
[01:06:23]  Because now you don't know if you take yourself more seriously than a random person on Twitter.
[01:06:28]  And that is an unacceptable thing to imagine that you believe about yourself.
[01:06:33]  Yeah.
[01:06:34]  I just, I love it.
[01:06:35]  Yeah, just like in a simple, hey, buddy, let's take a look at your quiver of arrows, alright?
[01:06:43]  You think you have more than one.
[01:06:46]  I don't think you have one.
[01:06:47]  No.
[01:06:48]  So just throw the bow down, say yes or no, and we'll go to lunch!
[01:06:53]  Yeah, and it's gonna be, it's like, answer yes or no, and it's gonna be worse for you if you try to get fancy.
[01:06:59]  Just because...
[01:07:01]  I'm just going to ask you a follow-up question to that that makes you sound worse.
[01:07:06]  I mean, and we exist, and they know we exist, and it affects their deposition tape stuff.
[01:07:13]  Like, I mean, I just don't understand.
[01:07:16]  I would honestly be stoked to be deposed at this point because it would be the most boring deposition ever.
[01:07:23]  No one's doing an episode about my deposition.
[01:07:26]  I'm just going to go like, eh, no.
[01:07:28]  Yes.
[01:07:28]  All right.
[01:07:29]  We done here?
[01:07:30]  That's it?
[01:07:31]  Why?
[01:07:32]  Probably.
[01:07:32]  It wouldn't go like this, that's for sure.
[01:07:34]  No, no, no, no.
[01:07:35]  So we have heard a lot of these depositions, and we've heard the one with Owen before.
[01:07:41]  Yeah.
[01:07:41]  In the Sandy Hook case.
[01:07:43]  And one of the things that I thought, you know, stuck out about that was that Owen seemed to understand What he had done wrong.
[01:07:54]  Yes.
[01:07:55]  Maybe it was because of Bill's aggressive gummy bear act.
[01:07:59]  Sure, I'm a puppet.
[01:07:59]  Yeah.
[01:08:00]  I guess I am a puppet.
[01:08:02]  Yeah, and he did seem to recognize this is the error that was made, and we can do better than this in the future.
[01:08:10]  Yes.
[01:08:10]  And so, Mark brings that up in this deposition.
[01:08:13]  Have we unlearned that lesson?
[01:08:15]  Exactly.
[01:08:16]  Going back to the use of that anonymous blog about Sandy Hook parent Neil Hustler.
[01:08:21]  You acknowledge that was a serious error on your part, right?
[01:08:25]  Yes, and you're well aware of what led to those circumstances because, you know, a very similar thing happened where somebody brought that to me.
[01:08:33]  And you acknowledge that that was a serious error on your part.
[01:08:36]  Yes, I wish I wouldn't have done that.
[01:08:38]  You called it the worst moment of your journalism career.
[01:08:40]  Yeah, you're still bringing it up to this day.
[01:08:42]  And this, what we're talking about today, is the same kind of error.
[01:08:47]  Objection.
[01:08:48]  No, definitely not the same kind of error, except that you pounced on it to bring me here.
[01:08:52]  Not the same kind of error.
[01:08:55]  It's exactly the same thing.
[01:08:57]  It is so the same kind of error, it is comical to all of us.
[01:09:02]  Yeah.
[01:09:03]  And that refusal to understand or accept that is probably a survival adaptation.
[01:09:09]  It has to be, right?
[01:09:11]  We're in full-on baboon-level territory of he's making screeching sounds.
[01:09:18]  And showing his red ass.
[01:09:19]  Like, we're not in a, this is a thinking being situation.
[01:09:23]  I can't imagine actually being able to contain the thought that this is, like, meaningfully different than these other times that you've relied on bad information to defame somebody.
[01:09:35]  Absolutely.
[01:09:36]  And last time you pretended that you'd learned your lesson and you clearly haven't.
[01:09:39]  Yeah.
[01:09:40]  And so...
[01:09:41]  I feel like the words, I'll throw myself out, should be involved here.
[01:09:45]  Like, the moment he says that, he'll just be like, you know what?
[01:09:47]  I'll throw myself out.
[01:09:48]  I got this one, guys.
[01:09:50]  Instead, what they do is Mark decides to read from the past deposition.
[01:09:55]  Read Owen's words back to him.
[01:09:56]  Why you gotta read my words, man?
[01:09:58]  Come on!
[01:10:00]  All right, Mr. Shore, you see there right in front of you is a cover page for the deposition testimony you gave in 2021.
[01:10:06]  Do you see that?
[01:10:07]  Yep.
[01:10:07]  Okay.
[01:10:08]  Can you...
[01:10:09]  And you'll see that there are...
[01:10:11]  It's condensed.
[01:10:12]  There are four pages per page.
[01:10:14]  If you can flip into that to me to page 116.
[01:10:31]  Okay.
[01:10:32]  Alright, and do you see a highlighted part up at the top of that page?
[01:10:34]  Yep.
[01:10:35]  Okay, I'm going to read that question and answer to you.
[01:10:37]  Okay.
[01:10:38]  But sitting here today...
[01:10:39]  When you go back to InfoWars, are you going to just be on live, get handed a story with clips from someone you don't remember who it is, and run it?
[01:10:48]  Or are you going to make sure it was fact-checked?
[01:10:51]  And your answer was, well, I would say, after this experience, I am highly less likely to be handed a story or a video clip and air it without checking it myself.
[01:11:02]  Do you see that?
[01:11:03]  Yes.
[01:11:05]  But that wasn't true because you've been doing that most days on your show ever since, right?
[01:11:10]  Nope.
[01:11:11]  And that's what you did in this case, right?
[01:11:12]  Nope.
[01:11:13]  Not at all.
[01:11:14]  Not the same thing to you?
[01:11:15]  Not even close.
[01:11:16]  Great.
[01:11:18]  So, yeah, I think you have...
[01:11:20]  I don't think that this is the most, like, fact-finding of depositions.
[01:11:28]  Right.
[01:11:28]  There's an element of this that is almost, like, shaming.
[01:11:33]  I do feel like at a certain point, Mark could have gone, none of us need to be here.
[01:11:39]  You know that, and I know that.
[01:11:41]  But there's also a part of Mark that's like, I can just whip you all day if I want to.
[01:11:46]  You can't leave.
[01:11:47]  Oh, and I think that there's a value to it beyond just sort of a shaming and rubbing your nose in it.
[01:11:54]  Sure.
[01:11:55]  The last time that there was a case that Owen was sued in, they had what appeared to be a promise to behave differently in the future based on what was the...
[01:12:09]  Like, he got away with not getting super severe punishments in the Sandy Hook case.
[01:12:16]  And largely some of that might have been predicated on the appearance of learning a lesson and the appearance of slight cooperation and a promise to do better.
[01:12:24]  So him being forced to acknowledge and deal with someone saying, hey, you didn't do better.
[01:12:32]  That's why we're here again.
[01:12:34]  I think that that's not just scoldy.
[01:12:37]  There is a point to it.
[01:12:39]  Yeah, no, the dunce cap didn't work last time.
[01:12:42]  You're still a little boy.
[01:12:44]  I don't know what to do next, but I guess tie you to a post and whip you.
[01:12:48]  Yeah, there's nothing more really to gain out of this exchange, but we've had this moment, and now you can reflect on it, but you're not going to, so whatever.
[01:12:58]  What are we doing?
[01:12:58]  But now that there's been the shaming, just wrap up.
[01:13:02]  Yep, yeah.
[01:13:02]  So you see after your answer, Mr. Ogden says, justice system is working.
[01:13:08]  Not all the way, but that's a big step forward for us.
[01:13:12]  Not...
[01:13:12]  I'm not, and I'm not saying that sarcastically.
[01:13:15]  Genuinely, for both you and I and my clients, we appreciate that position.
[01:13:20]  Mr. Ogden was being a bit naive there, wouldn't you agree?
[01:13:24]  I don't know.
[01:13:25]  Let me ask you again today.
[01:13:27]  I'm wondering today, now after this experience, sitting here today, when you go back to InfoWars, are you ever going to be on just live and run with a story and discuss things that are on your desk that you've never seen before?
[01:13:39]  Or are you going to make sure it was fact-checked?
[01:13:42]  Uh, nope.
[01:13:45]  Huh?
[01:13:45]  There you go.
[01:13:45]  Thank you, Mr. Shore.
[01:13:48]  That's all I need from you today.
[01:13:51]  We'll call it a deposition.
[01:13:53]  Yeah, so that's, uh, you know, I feel like the, you know, the reading of Bill's, uh, you know, I'm not being sarcastic.
[01:13:59]  This is, this is an outcome that is positive.
[01:14:02]  Yep.
[01:14:03]  I think it's kind of a reminder or almost like a, this is, we keep trying.
[01:14:09]  To offer you an ability to recognize or an opportunity to recognize what this is about.
[01:14:15]  And you refuse to recognize that.
[01:14:18]  It is maybe extremely funny that Mark is reading a sincere note sarcastically.
[01:14:35]  In the sincere note, it's like, I'm not being sarcastic.
[01:14:39]  And Mark is like, now we are being sarcastic.
[01:14:41]  That is what is happening now.
[01:14:43]  Yeah, there's layers of sarcasm and sincerity to it.
[01:14:48]  Yeah, fascinating.
[01:14:48]  That is like, this offer is still available to you.
[01:14:53]  Sure.
[01:14:53]  To recognize...
[01:14:55]  What the problem with these behaviors are.
[01:14:58]  You know, the problems with the behaviors aren't like that you love guns or that you think that Joe Biden's evil or whatever.
[01:15:04]  The problem with your behavior is that you're so reckless with this information that you end up defaming private citizens.
[01:15:12]  Yeah.
[01:15:13]  And the ability or the offer of recognize what's wrong with this and change.
[01:15:23]  Yeah.
[01:15:23]  It is fascinating to inject so much...
[01:15:48]  Contradictory meaning into a small number of words.

=== Naivete And Sarcasm (02:25) ===

[01:15:52]  Insofar as how is it possible to say Bill was being naive?
[01:15:57]  And yet be naive yourself.
[01:15:59]  How is it possible to say Bill wasn't being sarcastic sarcastically?
[01:16:03]  It's fascinating.
[01:16:05]  Yeah, it's a naivete, but it's a decreased naivete.
[01:16:10]  It's a sincerity, but with a little heightened sarcasm that just comes from, I think, that dynamic of we're doing this again.
[01:16:20]  Yeah.
[01:16:20]  You know, it's a, you know...
[01:16:24]  When you treat a first, second, and third warning a little bit differently, you know, when it's the same behavior.
[01:16:29]  Yeah, I mean, I'm worried that at this point we're borderline saying, like, hey, man, six or seven thousand more examples and we're really going to come down hard on you.
[01:16:40]  Six or seven thousand.
[01:16:41]  Maybe eight.
[01:16:42]  Maybe eight.
[01:16:44]  But ten is our max!
[01:16:45]  Ten thousand more examples and you're in trouble, sir!
[01:16:48]  Well, the issue, I think, is that I don't know what authority you have to call down a punishment.
[01:16:54]  Totally.
[01:16:54]  And, you know, it's more a, okay, we have six thousand examples here.
[01:17:01]  Can you please change your behavior?
[01:17:03]  Can you please operate in, like, a modicum of good faith and just please recognize why, like, X, Oh, you did X again.
[01:17:15]  Oh, you did X again.
[01:17:17]  And in hope that there is not a punishment that's necessary, there's a reflection and a changing.
[01:17:23]  Yep.
[01:17:24]  And maybe the naivete is believing that this is likely to happen.
[01:17:32]  Yeah!
[01:17:33]  But the...
[01:17:34]  I guess the reflection and the change should probably come on the side of people who can reflect and can change.
[01:17:41]  And it is.
[01:17:42]  Yeah.
[01:17:42]  And it does.
[01:17:43]  Yeah.
[01:17:43]  I think.
[01:17:45]  And that's reflected in not taking it as seriously that Owen could possibly learn his lesson from this.
[01:17:54]  That is the heightened sarcasm and the lowered naivete is a reflection of that change.
[01:17:59]  Totally.

=== Performance Show Bummer (01:20) ===

[01:18:00]  It appears.
[01:18:01]  But yeah, I think this was an interesting cross-section.
[01:18:04]  It's a short deposition, but I think that there's a couple of those moments that are really, really, they show you something.
[01:18:11]  Yeah.
[01:18:12]  And so I'm glad we could go over it.
[01:18:15]  I mean, you know, it is so weird to put these people in a place that should be boring.
[01:18:26]  You know?
[01:18:27]  They just, they're like insects in a jar.
[01:18:31]  They can't just be chill.
[01:18:33]  You know?
[01:18:33]  They just gotta fly around and hit all the goddamn walls, and it's like, you're not going anywhere!
[01:18:38]  Yeah.
[01:18:38]  I think some of that is because they're so used to everything is performance.
[01:18:43]  Yeah.
[01:18:43]  And, you know, like, the show is performance.
[01:18:45]  They go out on the streets with their camera and their iPhones and yell at people.
[01:18:49]  It's performance.
[01:18:50]  And so for that, this is kind of doing a show.
[01:18:54]  Yeah.
[01:18:54]  You know?
[01:18:56]  And it's a bummer.
[01:18:57]  Yeah.
[01:18:58]  Anyway, we'll be back with another episode.
[01:19:00]  But until then, we have a website.
[01:19:02]  Indeed we do.
[01:19:02]  It's knowledgefight.com.
[01:19:03]  Yep.
[01:19:03]  We'll be back.
[01:19:04]  But until then, I'm Neo.
[01:19:05]  I'm Leo.
[01:19:05]  I'm DZX Clark.
[01:19:06]  I am the Mysterious Professor.
[01:19:08]  Woo!
[01:19:08]  Yeah!
[01:19:09]  Woo!
[01:19:09]  Yeah!
[01:19:10]  Woo!
[01:19:11]  And now here comes the sex robots.
[01:19:13]  Andy in Kansas.
[01:19:14]  You're on the air.
[01:19:14]  Thanks for holding.
[01:19:17]  Hello, Alex.
[01:19:17]  I'm a first-time caller.
[01:19:18]  I'm a huge fan.
[01:19:19]  I love your work.