Tucker Carlson’s embracing of the right-wing fringes reached a new extreme Tuesday after he welcomed the infamous, mass-shooting-denying conspiracist Alex Jones on stage with him as part of his speaking tour.
Carlson, addressing a crowd of paying attendees in Pennsylvania, sung Jones’ praises and said he was “proud” to be alongside the 50-year-old Infowars founder who he said has been “vindicated on everything.”
Carlson, 55, went as far as calling the far-right provocateur “the most extraordinary person” he’d ever met. That’s a sharp contrast from Carlson’s comments about Jones in Jan. 2012, when he said Jones, who was then peddling Sept. 11 attacks conspiracies, “freaks me out.”
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Carlson’s glowing statements about Jones on Tuesday is sure to enrage the families of Sandy Hook victims, who lost their elementary-aged loved ones in a horrific mass slaying in 2012 that Jones repeatedly claimed was a hoax carried out by crisis actors.
Jones didn’t just keep his cooky beliefs to himself, unfortunately. He led a smear campaign against the grieving parents of victims, which led to incessant harassment in what was likely the lowest moment of their lives.
That hateful conduct is what has Jones on the hook for $1.4 billion as part of a pair of defamation judgements against him in Texas and Connecticut.
Those judgements also appear to be killing off InfoWars as we know it. A bankruptcy court said Tuesday it would auction off the assets of Infowars’ parent company, which will see it sell off everything from lighting fixtures to Jones’ dubious vitamin and supplement store. All of that money will then be directed to the families impacted by his lies.
With Jones’ personal outlet for spilling his rage now in its final days, he might find a new platform at Carlson’s side. He already sat down for an interview with Carlson in June and certainly appeared buddy-buddy with him again on Tuesday, telling the former network news host in his intro, “I gotta say, I love you.”
Jones went on to speak with his typical fiery rhetoric, declaring that if Donald Trump is elected again, “all of us, together, are going to lift the curse off of this country and we’re going to send the globalists to prison.”
Jones added that he could “feel the strength in this auditorium” on Tuesday night.
“It is amazing to meet all these great people,” Jones said, “whether they’re Black, white, old, young, to see the electricity in people’s eyes that are populist and that are Americans and that love God and that love children and love freedom and hate tyranny.”
Carlson interrupted Jones shortly after, saying: “It just makes me laugh. Alex Jones, so controversial. Love God, love America, love freedom. Oh, you’re so radical!”
Jones then took back the spotlight, using it to again rail against “globalists.”
“I’m for the war, peacefully with information, against the globalists,” he said. “The real war is here with the globalists and [George] Soros and [Barack] Obama and the New World Order and [investment firm] BlackRock. They’ve declared war on us and we accept the challenge. We’re taking the country back.”
New York magazine reported that a journalist in attendance spotted more Jones merchandise, like his slogan-filled shirts, than they saw Carlson-branded merch, which was actually being sold in the arena.
The far-right activist Jack Posobiec also spoke Tuesday, but New York reported that he was significantly upstaged by the presence of Jones, who was introduced just after him.
“Jones came out to a roaring crowd, all on their feet with phones in hand,” the magazine reported, adding that “every single line was an applause line, and the crowd got to the end of Jones’s catchphrases before he did.”
“If they want a fight,” Jones began at point, “you better believe they got one!” the screaming crowd answered for him.
New York reported that Tuesday’s stage was designed for a panel-style talk, but “it soon became clear that the rest of the night would belong to Jones.”
“Once he locked in, howling into the middle distance in front of him, there was no interrupting or restraining him short of a blow dart,” it added.
