“Trump on the verge of presidency, world in shock,” Alex Jones read to his viewers on YouTube. It was a headline from The Drudge Report. In a stunning upset, the presidency was about to be called for Donald Trump.
Minutes beforehand, as Fox News called Wisconsin for Donald Trump, Jones was in the midst of an elongated commercial break for supplements that promised to make him “more crazed” and gave him “more energy.”
Jones and his website, Infowars, spent the days before the election posting articles with headlines like “Hillary ‘Regularly’ Attended Witch’s Church” and subheadlines like “Hillary linked to child sex ring, emails suggest.”
But on Tuesday night, by 11 p.m., flanked by Trump political operative Roger Stone on his webcast, Jones and his fellow alt-right leaders were claiming total victory.
“For me, it’s better ecstasy than bagging the prom queen. It’s so ethereal I can’t believe that Trump is tuned into reality,” he said. “Trump’s tuned into America. His sons are tuned into America. They’re retweeting us every day.”
David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, claimed the victory on behalf of America’s white supremacists. “This is one of the most exciting nights of my life - make no mistake about it, our people have played a HUGE role in electing Trump!” he wrote on Twitter. “GOD BLESS DONALD TRUMP! It’s time to do the right thing, it’s time to TAKE AMERICA BACK!!!”
Richard B. Spencer, a white nationalist who refers to himself as the “Karl Marx of the alt-right” and has called for “peaceful ethnic cleansing” for a “white homeland,” rejoiced on Twitter shortly after midnight.
“The Alt-Right has been declared the winner. The Alt-Right is more deeply connected to Trumpian populism than the ‘conservative movement,’” he tweeted. “We’re the establishment now.”
Shortly after the AP called Pennsylvania for Donald Trump at 1:40 Wednesday morning, the top post on all of Reddit—the eighth-most-visited website in the United States—was a submission from Trump’s subreddit.
“IMMINENT VICTORY THREAD,” it read. “THIS IS NOT A DRILL. WE ARE ACTUALLY GOING TO WIN THIS. SJWs (social justice warriors), SUCK OUR DICK.”
As results poured in on Infowars’ early YouTube telecast, the conversation tended to the standard gripes of Infowars talkers—about a government so intrusive, as one host said, it “gives us anal exams at the airport.”
But over the course of the night, the mood became slightly jubilant, if unsurprised. Stone, as he said repeatedly, knew Trump would win all along.
At about 1 a.m., Stone and Jones began commenting on pool footage of disappointed Hillary Clinton fans at the Democratic nominee’s Election Night party, waiting for the candidate’s concession speech.
“Right now, you’ve gotta start thinking Bill’s thinking about what prison’s gonna be like,” said Stone.
Stone and Jones began drafting up a Cabinet. Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions will be a great secretary of defense, Stone said.
“They admit [Trump] doesn’t listen to many people. He admits: He listens to you [Stone], he listened to me a few times,” said Jones. “He listens to us. Why does that scare them?”
