Back in December, less than halfway into his campaign, Donald Trump gave an interview to Alex Jones, the radio host and operator of Infowars.com. Jones is frequently described as a conspiracy theorist, one who is an "alt-right" conservative, and he vigorously supported Trump's presidential bid. According to Politico, Jones occupies a fringe space in mainstream American conservatism, but nonetheless, Trump reportedly called Jones to thank him after he won the election, according to Jones. In a video posted over the weekend, Jones described the phone call he had with the president-elect.
He said, "Listen, Alex, I just talked to kings and queens of the world, world leaders, you name it, but it doesn’t matter, I wanted to talk to you, to thank your audience, and I’ll be on the next few weeks to thank them." I said, "is this is a private call?" And he said "No, I want to thank your viewers, thank your listeners for standing up for this republic, we know what you did early on, throughout this campaign, standing up for what’s right."
Politico reported that Trump's team did not respond to requests for comment about this phone call, but Jones said in the video that Trump would appear on his show at some point in the next few weeks to thank Infowars.com's audience for their support.
Jones also applauded Trump in the video for being different from the "average elitist." “We finally have people in Washington who actually listen to the people and don’t buy the propaganda of the big main-line corporations that are using weaponized media to mind-control simple-minded people,” Jones said. He went on to express his well-known disgust for the "scumbag mainstream media," insulting outlets ranging from Fox News — which he described as "fake right-wing news" — to "pathetic" CNN. Jones insinuated that these outlets merely amplified the elitism of the political establishment, and that Trump was different because he wanted to talk directly to the people instead of to the media.
He’s not calling other media, he’s not meeting with other media, he’s not talking to media. He wanted to directly talk to you and thank you because you’re the people, you’re the Americans, you’re the bitter clingers, you’re the people they couldn’t break your will, they couldn’t mind control you, you’re the core that’s going to restore the Republic.
Given that Jones spent much of his time during the 2016 election cycle referring to Hillary Clinton as "an abject psychopathic demon from hell” who wanted to “destroy the planet,” it's not surprising that he thinks Trump is going to help Americans "break our chains," but that Trump has the support of known white supremacists, birthers, and conspiracy theorists is worrisome at best, dangerous at worst.
