Eighteen months and a whole reality before the fuss about Megyn Kelly having Alex Jones on her show, Alex Jones had a delighted Donald Trump on his show.
“Your reputation’s amazing,” Trump told Jones as a call-in guest in December of 2015. “I will not let you down.”
That was long after Jones proposed that the Sandy Hook Massacre was a hoax perpetrated by the government to push gun control.
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The best thing you can say about Trump is that he might have been unaware of Jones’ theory, though that does not seem likely.
Maybe Trump never paused to consider how the parents of the 20 murdered children would surely feel on hearing that somebody was denying it ever happened.
Or maybe Trump simply did not care.
Whatever the truth, Trump became the president nonetheless. Jones says that Trump called him after the election to thank him for his support. They seem to remain pals, with Jones tweeting Tuesday that “World wide Donald Trump is the most powerful person in the media!”
Jones’ many other conspiracy theories include the contention that the government was behind the 9/11 attacks, in which Trump has claimed to have lost “hundreds of friends.” Trump’s appearance on Jones’ show had reportedly been arranged by Roger Stone, the political skulldugger. Stone had originally met Jones at Deaely Plaza in Dallas in 2013, on the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, which both men believe was also a conspiracy.
But of all such theories, the Sandy Hook hoax goes the furthest in crossing the line from wacky into unconscionably cruel.
And it is even more diabolical for being proposed as a way to undermine efforts to keep other kids from being shot.
Not that such concoctions are needed now that we are in the age of Trump.
The possibility of meaningful gun control has gone from slim to virtually none and the whole county seems just to shrug as kids continue to be shot one after another after another.
In the past month, they included 7-year-old Deniya Irving of St. Louis, who was sitting in a car when she was fatally shot along with three adults, including her parents. Five-year-old Jaheem Hunter of the Bronx was shot in the head and critically injured by a stray bullet on his birthday. Six-year-old Kingston Frazier of Madison County, Mississippi, was shot multiple times and killed after his mother left him momentarily in a car that was then stolen. Seven-year-old Kamari Munerlyn of Durham, North Carolina, was shot and killed as she rode in her family’s SUV. A 1-year-old was riding in Houston when his mother called 911 to report that somebody was firing from a passing car. The child can be heard crying in the background and the mother discovered when she arrived home that a bullet had pierced both his legs.
A 4-year-old boy in Compton, California, was shot in the head by a stray round and had stopped breathing when Los Angeles County deputies scooped him up and got him to a hospital in 90 seconds, likely saving his life.
“Being a father who has a 4-year-old himself, it’s hard not to imagine your own child sitting in that, and going, ‘Man, I could have just been driving home, and that could have happened to my kid,’” Deputy Brian Reza told reporters afterward.
Two-year-old Laylah Washington of Memphis was shot in the head after her mother said something to the occupants of a car that was driving crazily in a parking lot where she was waiting to pick up her son from work. The child is comatose, unresponsive, and intubated in a hospital bed in a Facebook Live video the family posted on Sunday. Here is viewing more essential than whatever Kelly runs of her interview with Jones.
“She breathing a little bit,” a woman at the bedside can he be heard saying.
The woman, apparently the mother, softly calls the child’s name, “Laylah…Laylah,” then says, “We got to keep on talking to her so she can pull through.”
The woman kisses the child’s left cheek and stokes her forehead.
“I don’t know what to do, baby” she says. “Lord, do your work.”
The mother then again leans close and whispers.
“Laylah…”
But Trump’s pal Jones is liable to tell you it never happened. Trump himself is liable to say nothing at all.
