Knowledge Fight - #657: Chatting With Elizabeth Williamson

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

Today, Dan and Jordan take a little breaky from Alex to have a chat with Elizabeth Williamson, author of the new book Sandy Hook: American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth. Get the book here

I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys saying we are the bad guys knowledge fight. Dan and George, knowledge fight. I need money. Andy and Kansas. Andy and Kansas. Andy and Kansas. It's time to pray. Andy and Kansas, you're on the earth. Thanks for holding. Hello, Alex. I'm a assistant color. I'm a huge fan. I love your work. Knowledge fight. I love you. Everybody. Welcome back knowledge. Right. I'm Dan. I'm Jordan. We're a couple dudes sit around worship at the altar of Celine and talk a little bit about Alex. Joe. Oh, indeed. We are Dan Jordan. Dan Jordan. Quick question. So what's your bright spot? My bright spot today, Jordan, is that people have been having a little bit of a field day with Alex's framed meme. I

have enjoyed it quite a bit myself. There's been some fun repurposing of that as a meme format. Alex holding up the frame meme and replacing it with album covers and what have you. A lot of fun. A lot of fun. If we were smart at all, we would try to find some way to like make this trend or something on Twitter. Instead of me just being like, oh, this is fun at the beginning of our show. We would go out and try and like people do do that. They create those memes and then it goes viral and then they get all the attention. It has never occurred to me that we could try to do that. It just did right now for me only in the sense of like it's not what we did. No, it kind of makes me feel gross to think about artificially trying to do. My bright spot is

ruined. What's yours? Your bright spot is amazing because everybody chose to do it of their own accord with no inspiration from us whatsoever. A lot of fun. It's amazing. What's yours? My bright spot, Dan, is the news has just come out. Taskmaster is releasing its own service. Are you talking about Stone Cold Steve Austin's former character, the task? I am not talking about Stone Cold Steve Austin's former character, the ringmaster. Taskmaster is a British kind of game show thing and what happens is they get five comedians or personalities from TV or whatever and then over the course of a few months, they have to do these tasks. So they'll have this task put these three balls at the top of the hill and they'll have to do it. Yeah, you've mentioned

this a couple of times in the past. It seems like a fun game. Because it's fucking amazing. I think what I realized, because whenever they put this news out and then we watched a little bit, I was like, Dan, you and I need to be doing the Taskmaster. It's you and me. You're Greg Davies. I'm Alex Horne. It's the same dynamic. We should be hosting it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't want to reverse it. Reverse it because you do all the work like Alex Horne and Greg Davies like me does fuck all, but talk loudly and annoy people really. Okay. So I think we can, I think we can handle it. Yeah, I'm in. I like this job offer. Yeah, I'm giving it to you right now, buddy. Just to correction, I do apologize. Stone Cold Steve Austin was the ringmaster. The taskmaster

was Kevin Sullivan's character previously in the WCW. It's a good thing you corrected yourself. I would get a lot of emails about that. It would be trouble. Also, there's talk that Stone Cold Steve Austin's coming back for WrestleMania. I heard that. How is it that I hear about that? That's the bottom line. That's a terrible Stone Cold impression. I love it. What? Very fun. Very fun. The idea that something from, I guess, my childhood or my youth might be able to see Stone Cold stun somebody. I guess he has come back a couple of times and just like beat up people. Yeah. I mean, at a couple of WrestleMania's, I remember from sort of recent times, not having a match or anything just coming out and giving someone a stunner. You run

in, you wear a vest, you kick somebody in the gut, you'd give them a stunner and then you get out of there. That's the greatest gig in the world. Yeah. Yeah. It's even better when you consider the payday. Oh, yeah. How much you get probably making. So anyway, we'll enjoy Stone Cold coming back when that happens. Yes. But Jordan, today we have an episode to present to the folks. Yeah. We were thrilled to sit down and have an interview with Elizabeth Williamson, author of the new book Sandy Hook, An American Tragedy. Oh, yeah. And it was a lot of fun. We'll get down to business on presenting this interview here in a second. But first, say hello to some new ones. I think it's a great idea. So first, Paul Joseph Watson's

distressingly red lips. Thank you so much. You are now a policy wonk. I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next, Jim Dandy. Thank you so much. You are now a policy wonk. I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next, Dan. It's about time you finally married my aunt. Love, Michael, not me. It's a different Dan. Just to be clear. I'm a policy wonk. You're now a policy wonk. Thank you very much. Next, Rod and Amanda are celebrating 18 years of marriage with only four anniversaries. It's a riddle. Thank you so much. You are now a policy wonk. I'm a policy wonk. February 29th, baby. Yep. I believe so. Yep. Next, Jermaine. It's Adam. And oh my God, mama, holy baby boy is here. Thank you so much. You're now a policy wonk. I'm a policy wonk. I'm

a wrestling so far. Never a bad time for mankind. And my nickname in university was the number 23. Thank you so much. You're now a policy wonk. I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much. Thank you all. And thank you to Elizabeth Williamson for taking some time out to chat with us about her new book. Very lovely. Also, it is now available in stores and online. It's a good book. Yeah. We'll have a link up on the page where we release. I guess there'll be a link somewhere. There'll be somewhere. Maybe we'll post it. Yeah. Sure. So please enjoy this interview. Hello. Welcome. Joining us today. This is very exciting. A rare guest. Indeed. Adding to the pantheon of a couple of guests that we've had. Most shows after 670 odd episodes have more than

three. True. We buck conventions and have nobody. I think largely because you and I don't want to inflict other people with the content that we talk about. And I think that most people don't want to talk about those things. And so people who are immersed in this world are kind of rare to interact with. And luckily today we have somebody who has immersed herself in this world. Very much so. Writer for The New York Times and actually has a new book that is coming out called Sandy Hook, An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth. Elizabeth Williamson, thank you for joining us here today. Hey, Dan. Hey, Jordan. It's so nice to be with you guys. Welcome to this awful content podcast. Yeah. Yeah. It's a tragic sort of subject matter

that we all cover. And that's kind of fitting because your book is related to sort of tragic topics. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. You guys immersed yourselves in Alex Jones' coverage of, if you could call it that, Sandy Hook from the very beginning. Yeah. We made that mistake for our mental states. Yeah. Yeah. And lives and just general cynicism has taken hold. Yeah. I had hope before. Yeah. It was an interesting ride, certainly, watching all of this stuff from late 2012 onward. And I imagine that you've probably had, well, maybe not an exact same, but fairly similar experience diving into a lot of this material. Yeah. In fact, I first got to know both of you, your work, that is, and your show, because Lenny Posner, who is the father of Noah

Posner, the youngest Sandy Hook victim, recommended that I listen to your podcast sort of going back and taking a look at what Alex Jones said on the day of the shooting. So that was how I first became acquainted with you both and had that whole show transcribed and kind of really studied what you had to say about it. Like, let's see. Let me see if I remember some of the things I said about it. I believe he's a trash human made of garbage and feces. Did that one go into the book? That did not go into the book, Jordan. I could not quote you on that. All right. Okay. It is a little surreal to know that random things Jordan was yelling have made it into the transcript of what was research material.

That will be our close told, as we say here in Washington. So that's how you sort of came upon our show, but was that in the context of you had already had it in your mind to write a book about this subject matter? Yes. Yeah. It was, you know, I got to know Lenny obviously at the very beginning of the project because he was one of two families that sued Alex Jones in Texas in the middle of 2018. And when I saw that kind of come over the transom, you know, one of our reporters who covers breaking news put that in the paper. And I thought, wow, that is a pretty interesting test of the First Amendment. And at the time we were really in the middle of, you know, the very beginning

of the Trump era, the concept of post-truth and alternative facts. And this just seemed like a real test on, you know, Alex Jones, as you guys have documented for years, often claims, if not always claims the First Amendment as a defense for what he says. And this seemed like a great test of, you know, what is free speech? And do your First Amendment rights cover spreading material that results in significant harm to already vulnerable people? That is one thing that I enjoyed about the book is, no, I mean, it doesn't matter how many years we're going to do this. You still have to write out the entirety of the First Amendment, put it in the book, and then remind people once again, it only protects you from the government. It doesn't

protect you from Facebook. I love how a lot of these people kind of say, they call it my free speech and my First Amendment. And it's kind of ours, you know, so. Right. There's a, it only exists really in the context of a community. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interactions. It's more of a team amendment, promulgated thing. Yeah. Not the exclusive province of anyone. Yeah, yeah. I think I think it was really fun too, is that now that has become such a meme kind of that is used by people in other countries as sort of a buzzword. You saw that with the Canadian truck organizers. Oh, yeah. And yeah, it's very strange how that understanding is taken off. Well, didn't we just talk to What's His Dumb Face, the guy who's Lizards, which was David Eich? David Eich. We just talked

about David Eich and he was talking about his First Amendment rights and you're like, you're from Britain, man. That's true. I think he still lives in the UK too. Yeah. I don't think he's relocated. No. Yeah, yep. It's very, it's very strange. But you're somebody who I know, you were you were writing about Alex or you had written about Alex prior to this, if I understand correctly, because I know that my first interaction with you was Alex yelling about you. I had heard him complain about something you had written before we had ever spoken. And so I was kind of wondering, like, where did your exposure with him begin? Like, what do you recall when you first came in contact with his his content and what what kicked off that path?

Yeah, I do. I may have heard about him a little bit during 2015. But my first exposure to him, you know, sort of in the flesh was during the Republican National Convention in 2016 in Cleveland. So he and Roger Stone, and I described this in the book, they were on the stage at the the America First Unity Rally on the Cuyahoga River, on the convention, you know, sort of in the convention city, if not on the convention grounds. And I sat down next to a woman who was a very nice, she seemed like just one of those nice women, you know, she was sitting there, you know, had a really big smile and kind of a gentle way about her. She was probably in her early 60s. And I was asking her the way I was asking a lot of people

who were there for that rally. Alex Jones and Roger Stone were on the stage. And I was saying, where do you get your news? And she was saying, louder with Crowder, info wars, Ben Shapiro. And and she said, you know, if you're a journalist, because I, of course, introduced myself as one, she said, if you're a journalist, and you're not listening to those shows, you're only getting half the story. I can, that makes me really sad, because like I can understand someone of that age cohort, watching Alex, possibly, sure, I could see them watching Ben Shapiro, because he at least presents himself as like, I'm pretending to be an intellectual, right, the idea that someone over 25 would watch louder with Crowder is so sad to me. That show is the

dumbest. It's insane. It's sophomoric attempts at comedy. Yeah. Like, I can't, I can't imagine an adult watching that or conservative comedy, sophomore attempts. Sure. But he does like poo poo jokes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's that's his son with her. And I would say her son was, you know, maybe 30 or so, maybe a little bit younger, a little bit older. And he they, you know, she spent her son was disabled. So he was in a wheelchair. And they spent a lot of time together, because he had a lot of difficulties. And they would, you know, she mentioned that they'd listen to these shows on their way to doctor's appointments and things like that. So I think they were things that he started listening to her that he was listening to for a long time. And she kind of,

you know, picked up on it from him. At that point, it's a parent's responsibility to not adopt the kids thing. Yeah. If your son jumped off a bridge, would you jump off of it too? Well, I mean, bridge jumping is pretty hot these days. That's fair. There's also a nice irony to that image that you're painting of, you know, this rally involving people like Alex and Roger Stone, who are so staunchly opposed to like government regulations happening on the Cuyahoga River, which is essentially a testament to the effectiveness of the EBA. It used to be, it used to just be shit. That's a tragic image. So you ended up running into this, this protest, but is this where you, did you end up talking to Alex and Roger? No, it was a very crowded event.

There were a lot of people there, a lot of Hillary for prison t-shirts, remember those? Oh, yeah. And, and so no, he was up on the stage and kind of in his, you know, entourage and sort of, you know, security around him and things like that. So you describe him in the book as just him and Roger Stone is just swaggering about with their retinue. Yeah, acting like celebrities. Like that's one of the big things that you, you bring up for just specifically that is Alex is such a, I mean, star fucker that like he goes to those places to soak up their celebrity, which is such a great point of yours. Yeah, he, it was interesting, his staffers were telling me that that, you know, one of them described him as, you know, he would always say, you know,

as you guys know better than me, you know, Hollywood, the root of all, you know, globalist evil. And at the same time, he said he was like a girl screaming after the Beatles when it came to, you know, people he was meeting at the convention. Antonio Sabato, Jr. You're the best. He was really, and also the other thing he was doing, which is, you know, his cameraman, who was with him at the time told me for the book that, you know, what they were doing is, you know, making their way through media row, you know, they were inside rather than outside the convention barrier where, you know, Alex Jones would typically be with his bullhorn, you know, always on the outside of the perimeter. Instead, they were very much a part of things.

He was definitely on the ascendant. They were, you know, kind of swanning through the crowd, creating provocations, you know, on media row. He crashed, Sank Wieger's show, The Young Tour. Yep. Yep. Jimmy Doar spit on him, I believe, if I recall. And now they work together. He did. Yeah, Alex Jones did wind up with spit on him that day. But that was all great for him, because this cameraman filmed all of that, and they were really looking for viral video from there, and they got it. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's the unfortunate thing that that strategy does tend to ends up paying off. Yeah, there were a lot of events that I think I described him in the book as, you know, he was, he's like a shark. He needs attention. If he doesn't get it, it's like a

shark swimming, you know, if he doesn't can't stay still, never sleeps. But with a shark, it's just sort of evolved that way with Alex, because he's on stimulants. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a certain type of evolution. Yeah. An addiction evolves over time. That is true. So this, is this where like your first article that involved Alex come from? Is this where that that's sprung out? Yeah, I was on the editorial board for the times then, and I wrote, you know, a short piece just on what is this, you know, alternative news ecosystem that, you know, these folks are really wired into? And what is this, what is this louder with Crowder that I hear? Yeah, and I really did feel like very much an outsider, because of course, as soon as that story went in the paper, I got a lot of,

you know, people who listen to Ben Shapiro do not listen to louder with Crowder. And how could you put them in the same sentence? And, you know, all of that. So, but my, my broader point, you know, nerdier point was just that this is a whole group of personalities and shows and sources of information that most of us have never really heard of at the New York Times and at that time. Yeah. In the intervening time, because I mean, one thing that we talked about with Mark Bankston, who is a solid protagonist in your book, he specifically said, you know, over the years that I've absorbed myself in this case, you know, it has definitely changed some of the way that I think about things. Do you feel like this is, this has had that kind

of effect on you as well? So I remember a moment with Mark Bankston and Bill Ogden, another name dropping. Another partner. Do you know Bill? I don't know if Bill's been on the show. Has he been on the show? He is now. We have a strong no-Bill Ogden policy. Yeah. He gets to go on TV and Mark gets to hang out with us. Okay. I get it. I like Bill. I met him when I was down in Austin. He's great. But I like, I also kind of like to pretend there's a feud. Oh, I see. Okay. All right. Well, I'm not going to step on that. But he told me once, we, after one of the, you know, while I was working on the book, we went out to dinner and I remember Mark went off to take a phone call and Bill was talking about how his role in the case was listening to hundreds and hundreds of hours

of info or his broadcast to find the points where he references the family so that they could make sure they had every reference to, you know, to the plaintiffs, to the Sandy Hook families. And he said, I was seriously starting to lose it. He said he, he one late, you know, late one night, he just was listening to, you know, what his 40th or 50th successive info wars for our programming stint. And he was saying, Oh my God, what if he's right? Yeah, that's a, that's a fairly chilling line in the book. Yeah. And, and, and, and I thought, wow, you know, but it is true that if you, and that's the sort of frog boil of all of this, isn't it, that, you know, I mean, this, this is, this form of propaganda is like Nazi times, you know, you start by with a, with a relatively

minor suggestion. Then you start with something a little stronger, you have a small lie, then you have a little bigger lie. I mean, the very first lie was about crowd sizes at the inauguration, right? On the very first day. And then, you know, look at the size of the lies by the time we got to January 6th. And it really was a kind of continuum like that. And it was sort of like before we really knew it, you know, we, we were looking at this and saying, this, this lie about the 2020 election was unthinkable even a year ago. And here is a significant swath of Americans who really believe it. I mean, I suppose, I suppose my next question then is like, do you feel like this type of propaganda is different? Because, you know, before, before 2017, before the

inauguration, it wasn't like that's the first time people were believing in things that were clearly and incontrovertibly bullshit. So you feel like this is something that you have interacted with in a different way from, let's say, other forms of propaganda. So I think taking the long view, Jordan, I think the big thing, obviously, that is a big difference certainly from the Nazi era until now is social media. And, you know, the gigantic uptake in social media, even from, you know, say, so I went back and I talked to parents of, you know, the mother of a young woman who was involved in the Virginia Tech massacre. And she was saying, you know, here was a huge shooting on a college campus in a state where, you know, people would get

concerned about gun policy and the aftermath of that. And there just really wasn't a lot of conspiracy theorizing around that shooting. But if you look at, you know, how many people had a Facebook account, for example, in 2007, when that occurred, it was 20 million people. By December of 2012, when the Sandy Hook shooting happened, that number was one billion. And I really think that that has accelerated. I mean, we've spoken together about some of the old cultish things and things like that, the lone guy on the subway with, you know, a photocopied sheet, you know, about the JFK assassination or, you know, those people were really isolated before. And now they've found each other and they can speed whatever they come up with

around the world in seconds. Yeah. And I think that they, like through the social media and like YouTube, like they've found really efficient ways to monetize and create businesses out of the speediness of that messaging. And that's got to be like a pretty negative reinforcement. Yeah. Yeah. And that doesn't even, you know, you think about, you think about that change. And now there's a, the TikTok is so impenetrable to so many people above the age of 19. Yeah. That's like my louder with Crowder. Yeah. Yeah. Or 13. But you do see millions of views on these short videos that are all bullshit instantly, you know, they're there and then they're gone and it sticks in your brain. It's, you know, I think, I think it's impossible for

humans to interact with social media in a responsible way, but I could be wrong. That's a hard time. Yeah. I'm kind of with you on that one. I think, you know, I do think, I do see, I sound like a super Midwestern Pollyanna here and I kind of am, but it's, I really do think that the newer generation, the younger generation coming up are much more skeptical about what they read on social media and about having accounts in general. Of course, there are a thousand exceptions to that, but I really do feel like, you know, I mean, I have kids who are that age and I really feel like they are much more skeptical, not only of what they read on there, but about having an account and what that means in general. Sure. The privacy stuff has become

so much more clear since, you know, I think in just my time since I was in college, you know, Facebook went from the Facebook where it was the thing where only college students were on it to being wide, like open and kind of like this interesting way that you could like promote events and there's all kinds of possibilities to it. And now it's like your grandma's on there and she's sending you chain emails. Yeah. Like it's, it's taken on, like in addition to the, like the privacy concerns becoming more clear, the evolution of what this is has changed. And to your point, Jordan, where you were bringing up the, it seems like TikTok is kind of like a place where there is a newer sense of it. Yeah. Like it's migrated a little bit to that.

But I wonder if what you're saying, Elizabeth, is that, that you feel like some of these, like younger folk are just avoiding even like engaging at all. Like, like even with TikTok kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I have a, I have an 18 year old and he got on Twitter, maybe in the last two or three months, because he's communicating with, you know, his football buddies or something like that. But even before, before that though, no social media accounts whatsoever, you know, just kind of took it on board that, boy, if you want to go to college, one great way not to get into the school, your choice is to have somebody surface one of your old, you know, awful tweets or Facebook posts, you know, or

Instagram posts. That's terrifying. Yeah. I didn't even consider college admissions looking for some racist thing. You post it as a 13 year old or something. That'd be crazy. Yeah. And so I think that, you know, to some degree, that message sinks in. And also, you know, they're just that much more technologically savvy, you know, they kind of understand how the sausage is made online, which is really interesting. I mean, and that actually that knowledge is being used as I say in the book, you know, there's, there is a series of games now where people can make up a conspiracy theory as a kind of game as a way to inoculate them against glomming onto conspiracy theories and spreading them online without really knowing it before they hit the button, you know, so they

kind of understand, yeah, like, how do you make one, you know, how do you make it spread? Like, what elements do you put in there to make it really viral, you know, just responding to the, you know, outrage algorithm and all of that. So if you see something online, and they're studying this, you know, there are people who are looking at this and if they kind of inoculate people in that way by showing them how this is made and how to spread them, then when they run into them online, they're less likely to spread them themselves and to be more skeptical because what is the belief in a conspiracy theory, right? It's sort of saying, I possess superior knowledge, you know, I know something the rest of you rubes don't know. And so if you can use that in this sort of

pre bunking thing that they as they call it, all to the good because talking people out of this stuff, as you guys know, is really hard. Yeah, that's that's definitely something that we hear a lot. It does also sound like you're a tyrant pushing vaccines on us. So I mean, I heard inoculation there too. I don't know what you're trying to bring at us. New York Times sounds like a bio weapon to me. Yeah, I think one of the things that I find very interesting about my experience with doing this show is that there has not really been a ton of interaction with info warriors, let's say. And I think part of that is just due to the fact that we don't really engage on social media all that much. It's kind of like the way that folks end up having most of their

arguments. So we have not had a ton of instances where we try to talk somebody out of these beliefs. But second hand, I do hear that, you know, it's, you know, deprogramming as it were can be very difficult from once you internalize an idea like Sandy Hook was fake or January 6th was provocative or whatever it was set up by the FBI or Antifa. Yeah. Yeah. Do you do you get a lot of that from your from your work? Do you get a lot of folks who want to convince you that you're wrong? Oh, absolutely. And in reporting this book, just every conspiracy theorist I spoke with. In fact, there's one in particular, Kelly Watt, whose, you know, life I really sort of delve into to I was just very curious about how, you know, how does someone with the email handle great mom,

you know, GR8, numeral eight mom, actually get to a place where she's posting on Lenny Posner's memorial site to his murdered son. I want Geraldo to open the caskets. Yeah. Yeah. That story was fucked up. Yeah. I could not understand how someone could get to that place. And so Geraldo famously opened Al Capone Safe and there was nothing in it. She was kind of making a I'm being facetious. Sorry. No, she was. Yeah. And, you know, and then the idea of so she had a cleaning house cleaning a house and office cleaning business in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And, you know, her sort of unique contribution to this crazy quilt of Sandy Hook theories was let's find out what company cleaned up the school after the massacre. And that became one of the

more toxic requests that these hoaxers put in to the to the board of ed in Newtown and to the city of Newtown. You know, we want a copy of the contract and we want receipts and we want photos and they were extremely graphic in what they were describing might have been cleaned up from the school. And the thing that was really interesting is one of Lenny Posner's volunteers in debunking all of this stuff actually found the records of police report that said this is the name of the company. I actually called the company. I had a conversation with them. They confirmed that, yes, they did in fact clean up the school. There was an extremely detailed record of what was removed from the school and what happened to it. And so I presented this to her and comes the answer

after some silence. Where's the receipts? So it's just never ending. And, you know, there is no and I actually think that maybe someone like her, they're so far down the rabbit hole that there's a there would be a level of shame involved. I mean, yeah, of course, your entire life is a lie. Well, and not yet that definitely Jordan. And but I think beyond that, you have tormented the families of murdered children. I mean, at some point, maybe you can't come to grips with that anymore. It's easier to believe the lie. I think I would personally have a really tough time. But I also think that maybe if you're in that state, you can't even conscious, you're not even consciously making that decision.

Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, you can't you obviously can't accept the possibilities. You're just you just won't allow it to happen. And that manifests as these like, just instinctual denials of any proof that you're wrong. What do you think is different, Elizabeth? Because there is the story from where Lenny Posner joins the, I mean, I guess, host hoax Facebook group. And I believe it's Jen, who eventually exits the group and helps Lenny start, you know, his his programs. So I was wondering, what do you think is different between Jen and what? Great mother, great mother. Yeah, great mom. She actually was a great mom. Um, so that that that woman, Jen Forsman. So here's what I think happened at the beginning.

And I think a lot of the parents, you know, enlightened me to this, and share this view that in the beginning, this was such a horrific crime that no one wanted to believe it happened. You know, it was the parents themselves, they they when they write and and speak about it, they talk about waking up in those first days, you know, and saying, Oh, my God, what a horrible nightmare I just had. And then realizing that they're living it, that is their life. And that did happen. And there was, there were a significant number of these early entertainers, I'll say, of the conspiracy theory around Sandy Hook, who were young parents themselves who had children around that same age. And one of them, you know, I profiled for the book, a woman named Tiffany

Moser, who became one of Lenny's most convinced, convinced and and committed volunteers, who, you know, had had a tragic situation in her past, she hit a child with her car and that child died. She had two children who were around the same age as the children who were killed. And she went onto the Sandy Hook hopes Facebook page, just saying, I am here for whoever can tell me this didn't happen. I just need to believe that this did not occur. And that was and that was Jen, too. You know, she also took a little bit of a true crime kind of approach to the to the whole crime. Right. But but these were the people who kind of peeled off, because they were open to being convinced that was more of a, you know, a gut kind of emotional reaction to the crime itself.

I just don't want to believe this level of evil is possible kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly right. Yeah, they just couldn't do it. It's interesting that you brought up that, you know, people with young children around that like, like, what something I find really bizarre is that I just realized that Alex's kids would have been younger at that point in 2012. Yeah. And it's that that wasn't the, you know, it wasn't an experience that he had of. I believe it was actually on the very first day when the news broke, because this is something that I remember specifically, when we covered it, is when the news first broke, Alex did not immediately have a negative reaction. His first reaction, his instinctive reaction was,

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the families. Yeah, that was his instant reaction. And then the next day, it was all fake. Everything was a lie. He was couching ways to make it. Sure. He was. He was. That's true. That's true. There was a gut check a little bit, but it didn't last the whole show. No, you're right. I apologize. I apologize. I apologize. My memory is literally always fuzzy. That's the only reason the show works. Yeah. But there was a moment. Remember when he talked about, okay, this is happening at the holidays. Oh my God. You know, however many kids, he had the number wrong, but he knew that it was it was a large number. Yeah. And and he did seem to be at least momentarily taken aback. Yeah. But then he dove right in. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So what an asshole. Yeah. You know, I'm thinking this guy's no good. I'm really, I'm having a negative opinion on him. Yeah. That's, that's really, that's really bizarre. Dee, you know, just thinking about the differences between what makes somebody, somebody who would give up on the conspiracy went confronted with some reality and somebody who sticks to their gun, who just never stopped. Yeah. I wonder if there is even some kind of consistency between what, you know, what and what you could learn from, from that. Yeah. The differences. I think it, I think it really has to do with, I mean, this university in Miami, Joe Wyshinski, who studied conspiracy theories, especially political ones. And I would call

this one of those because gun control was always a factor and, you know, or almost consistently and definitely the government planned it, makes it a political conspiracy theory. But you know, his, he will, he will say, you know, even QAnon does not select for politics that, you know, it is really your kind of mindset and your personality much more than your politics that determines whether or not you believe these conspiracy theories. And, you know, initially I was skeptical because QAnon is so much about Hillary Clinton and the Democrats and, you know, Democratic stronghold and blah, blah. But if you really look at, you know, the different variants of that, you know, child trafficking theme, you can kind of understand where he's coming from.

And I think, you know, a lot of these people, there's a level of narcissism as, you know, you guys have documented so well with Jones that, you know, I need to possess superior knowledge. And then there's a certain, you know, and this is this woman Kelly Watts daughter Madison explained to me, you know, my mom never felt like anybody really respected her for having an original idea or, you know, making a kind of intellectual contribution, or something like that. It was, it's really important to her to be the sort of very unique truth, which, you know, it's hard to even countenance that you think, you know, other people would, you know, maybe like get an advanced degree or, you know, study, study something, but

yeah, it's like, it's an emotional thing you can kind of relate to and understand. It's, you know, it's a struggle, but the way you proceed from there is not good. Now the interesting thing about your book that I appreciate is that despite it being very focused on Sandy Hook, it is also a really good example of that kind of great conspiracy theory singularity. So many of these people wound up at Sandy Hook conspiracy theories coming from different motives, different backgrounds, different things that they wanted to be true. And, you know, as we, as you point out, you know, yoga moms turn into anti-vaxxers five years later, and it's all the same conspiracy theory, but people are just coming at it from so many different

areas. Yeah, no, it's true. And you know, I, one thing I didn't explore a lot, although I did in talking about Kelly Watts life and kind of what her life had been because it, you know, there's a lot of trauma in, in her life. I do think trauma in some of these folks lives played a role, you know, like, like Tiffany Moser, the woman, you know, who had the accident with her car and a child died or, you know, we just had a story in the Times yesterday about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his belief in, you know, just one of the biggest anti-vaxxers, you know, with an enormous following and just like an absolutely divisive force in the Kennedy family. But, you know, a lot of trauma in that guy's life. Sure. Alex was stuck under a house one time

when they were fumigating it. Yeah. Drama. No, I mean, it is, it is very much a, I find it so analogous to evangelical born again Christians, the ones that come to it later in life because something happened. Something was like, yeah, I mean, or yeah, well, Roger Stone, of course. But, but there is that like, there's an inciting event that where you're at your lowest, there's a group that love bombs you essentially, and then you're just in, you know, so if you're at your lowest point, your business isn't going so well, nobody's helping you out, you find a QAnon website, you're immediately love bombed with guess what, you're so smart. Yeah, it's not even love bombing, it's like validation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, that makes me think of, I think that's

a really good point. It makes me think of somebody like Mike Flynn, you know, Mike Flynn, when he was in the military was, you know, people called it Flynn formation, you know, his kind of misconceptions about Islam or, or radicalism or, you know, he didn't have that terrifying thing that you just told me, you know, but it's a general and you're telling me that it's everybody's like, oh, yeah, we know that guy's full of shit, but we're going to continue promoting him, of course, you've worked at offices where people are like, true, we're going to make him the national security advice. Exactly. Yes. Great. Awesome. But yeah, but it was that, you know, that kind of the thing that really struck me about a lot of these groups, like the Sandy Hook hoax group or any of these

gatherings, you know, on, on social media was how mutually reinforcing they were, you know, they all made each other feel really smart. And that's what Kelly Watts daughter said, to have a guy like Jim Fetzer, who is a PhD, who is a former professor of, wait for it, logic at the University of Minnesota, one of the biggest Sandy Hook hoaxers out there, praising her for her insights for her scrappy reporting for calling hundreds of people in Newtown and never giving up as she sought, you know, the contract, the Holy Grail for, you know, who cleaned up the school, that makes people feel good. And if they don't have a lot of other sources for that, it's really hard to give that a rest. Yeah. Yeah. I'm bummed out that Jim

Fetzer was a professor of logic. I studied a bit of logic in college. I do think that when people who study that break, it's not a twig. It's a tree. No, no, no, you can't get falling. Logic is too much of a you break bad really. Logic is like a third rail for you. You know, once logic breaks, you're out of you're out of games, you know, well, it's also just a tool you can use also for nefarious ways to make really bad arguments. But that's what shocks me too, is that Fetzer's arguments are not logical. They're not they don't follow formal structure. I don't know. I'm sorry. I just got lost there for a second. I am amazed. One thing that is I will give to Jim Fetzer is that even in print form, when you write out his quotes, he does sound like he's a shrieking madman,

you know, like you can hear him going, this is true in your in your head while you're reading his quotes. Yeah. Yeah. That's how many times did you interview him? A few in person that interview in the in my rental car. Right. I enjoyed I enjoyed that story. He's he's laid low after the case. And he does not want to talk to Elizabeth. And eventually he's like, fine, I'll get in your car. Like it's a drug. Yeah, absolutely. Like a drug deal. My family doesn't need to know about this. I'll get in your car. His family was so angry that he but it was like crack to him the idea that he would get yet one more interview and some attention and be able to trumpet his because

he had been successfully by Lenny's lawyers, you know, Lenny's just a failure failure listeners in he had sued him for defamation and won. So he won a $450,000 judgment in October of 2019. And so I went and spoke with him after that. And after he lost, you know, this was enough to bankrupt probably two generations of his family. So yeah. Yeah. So he was saying, you know, my family doesn't really and it was killing him to say that because it was his wife and daughter. So it just seemed like he had been completely, you know, emasculated by this. But you know, it was sort of like, I'll talk to you in the car. So then my and then he immediately decided to find a way to double that judgment against him and bankrupt four generations of his family.

Lenny's sealed videotaped deposition and gave it to the hoaxers. And then they put it online and they compared Lenny's ear to his ear in previous photos and decided that the Lenny who testified in that defamation case in the courtroom was an imposter. This checks out. Yep. I remember that actually being like a really popular thing on conspiracy message boards, the like, let's compare ears. Yeah. Wow. So weird. Once you get an ear, you know, the rest of a person's soul. Yeah. That's that's Joe Biden ear conspiracy too. I think one of the hoaxers told me about it there. I'm sure I there's a Joe Biden body part conspiracy forever. It's top to bottom. And I'm sure there's an ear conspiracy for everybody. The queen. I mean, Hey, honestly, Joe Biden is three people. He's a clone.

He's a walk in also Jim Carrey and he's Jim Carrey. Yeah, we learned that from Project Camelot. Jim Carrey is wearing a mask. He plays Joe Biden. That's why he does these gaffes. Yeah. Sometimes he does Pratt Falls. It's because it's Jim Carrey. He can't stop himself. He can't not be funny. Yeah. You know, very insightful stuff from actually Project Camelot who interviewed Jim Fetzer also a couple of times. Yes, it's all connected. Full circle. I can't imagine what that like would be like to be in a closed space with him. Would you would you say that that was maybe the most bizarre experience of the book preparation? Because I would like I would love to hear about if there was some close spaces with Jim Fetzer is pretty top. Yeah, what tops Jim Fetzer's

weirdness? Jim Fetzer's breath. There we go. Yeah, I do mention that in the book. That's the only reason I brought it up. I know. It was quite funny. On a technicality, I still think that's part of the being in a confined space. Yeah, I will give Dan that. Yeah. Yeah. I can't fairly separate that out. I would have to say the Alex Jones interview. Yeah. That when I interviewed him, that was really interesting. And it was funny because after I interviewed him, I had a couple years to think about it. So I, you know, I kind of listened to it again and again and thought about it and thought about it in the context of everything that came after. And I think, you know, it was a really interesting window into the man, more so than it seemed on the day of because at

the time it seemed like he was just doing a show, you know, a lot of it. He called me the next day and then he spoke for two more hours on the phone. And that was actually a little more real, because I think he got, he might have called his lawyers and made a mistake. Liz and I didn't actually put snipers on the roof of my building. He just got drunk. Yeah, he could have just been drunk. Perhaps. I don't know, but, you know, no idea. But I got the sense like when we were speaking, Rob Dew, his, you know, top lieutenant was in the room. And I got the sense that he was trying to entertain him. You know, watch me intimidate this woman. You know, watch me like make fun of her,

watch me make fun of her paper to her face, et cetera, et cetera. And that kind of stuff really doesn't bother me. And so it didn't really rattle me much. But there's such a, there's such a good little part in whenever you're describing the interview in your book, where you say, if he was really trying to intimidate me, he would have come up and put his face right into mine. And instead, he just kept backing further and further away from you, which yeah, he was kind of moving around the room and speaking the corners. Yeah. That was a great kinetic description of his complete and utter cowardice. I feel bad for Rob Dew. He didn't get a show. That's really where my heart goes out to the poor guy. Well, he gets to be the corporate representative a few years after this. And then

he gave us a show. Yeah. Yeah, I'll say. That was, yeah, that his, his behavior was also really interesting because it was such a, like he'd laugh at Alex's jokes and then sort of check Alex's face to make sure it was okay that he was laughing. Like, was that a joke? Because if you didn't mean it as a joke, boss, I don't want to be laughing. That was, that was interesting. And then I remember calling back, writing a different story. And he, and he was like, is this Elizabeth Williamson from the CIA who says she works for New York Times? And I was just like, Rob, that's just lame. You could do better, Rob. Come on. Yeah. I go, yeah. Okay, Rob, is Alex around? Rob, can I talk to your dad, please? Stop, stop pretending to be a big boy.

Yeah, that's actually kind of sad. I was thinking like, you can do better, Rob, but I bet he actually can't. No, that's probably as good as he's got. I don't think he can. Yeah. I think history teaches us this. Yeah, I have gone back and I realized that one of the things that I've generally missed over the time doing the show is the entire existence of the Info Wars Nightly News, the show that Rob was the head of. And I've gone back and watched some of that and it's, I was right to ignore it. It's so bad. He did a terrible job for years. I matched only by David Knight, right? Yeah. David Knight had a competence to him. He was just boring. He was for the set of the older crowd who might be offended by Alex's yelling.

Instead of louder with Crowder, Ben Shapiro, you would think the quieter with David. Yeah, exactly. Let's calm it down with David Knight. Yeah, yeah. Have some chamomile tea in the morning. Bedtime. Yes. Yeah. Do you like to go to bed at 11 a.m.? David Knight is for you. So you celebrate New Year's at four in the afternoon. You interviewed Alex. What was the, what was the surrealness of it other than him backing into a corner and failing to intimidate? What would you, what was about it was so surreal? I really was trying to get to the idea of how, how do you sort of, how do two things, how do these two things exist in Alex Jones? He is the father of, you know, three children,

four, sorry, now four. And he is someone who knew that he was inflicting a lot of pain on parents who he had to have known, obviously, that he was inflicting a lot of pain on the parents of children who were his children's ages who were brutally murdered. And I just, you know, all the joking aside and all the, you know, the, the, the sort of bravado and the, and the kind of, you know, performance, I just, I couldn't really get there. And it made me think about some of these other conspiracies where is it that if you actually looked at that and you didn't just deflect the question, could you actually live with yourself? You know, I mean, I've talked with John Ronson, you know, the Welsh filmmaker who's spent a lot of time with Alex Jones from way back.

And, you know, he thinks that he was a different person before, you know, that earlier on he was not the kind of person who could do something like that. And the Islamophobia and the racism and all of that. And he thinks that with money and power came a lot of that. What do you guys think? I don't necessarily believe that. I think that John knew him and obviously has more exposure to him. Sure. But I think that a lot of the stuff, let's say the bigotry and the denial of stuff, those kernels were there in his earlier career. It's just maybe with money and power he had more to protect and more need to accelerate and be a more dramatic and interesting person. Because once you start to make money off being, I don't know, a shithead, it doesn't

excite the audience as much to maintain that same level. You kind of have to escalate in order to keep people's attention. I think that business model maybe he became a slave to, but I think a fair amount of those tendencies were already there. He's a big John Birch guy from the beginning of his career. And there are nothing, if not an ideology that's based around pretty racist central concepts. You don't get to be a nice caring person and also believe that black people are part of a communist plot to kill white people. The idea of civil rights is a communist conspiracy. Anathema to, yeah. I don't feel like that exists generally in a non-bigoted person. I mean, that is an interesting question as to what Alex was like in different time periods, but

one thing that John said to us when we talked to Mr. Ronson was he doesn't know if you can really judge Alex based on the way that we would judge other people. Because maybe Alex is really just a narcissistic psychopath. And if that's the case, what really do we have to say to a person who is just utterly incapable of giving a fuck about whether or not murdered kids, families are in pain? Yeah. I mean, I always shy away from those things because I'm not a psychiatrist obviously. Goldwater. Just a journalist, exactly Goldwater. But it is awfully hard to come up with the how, and not only him, you know, how these people could, it's either, maybe it's that they truly, truly believe it. In Alex's case, he has already said he thinks children died. So this does not

apply to him. But I think there are some of these individuals who really do believe that this didn't happen or it didn't happen the way it was reported. And then I think there are others of them that there's something they're getting out of this, which that is much more precious to them than even their reputation, you know, or their, you know, or the sort of ostracization that comes from espousing a theory like this. So they're kind of driven back into their own crowd. Because those are the only people who will give them the benefit of the doubt anymore, not only as a conspiracy theorist, but as a person. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense if you go out into reality, it's painful. And if you retreat back into fantasy, everybody likes you. I mean, it's,

it's, you know, if you go outside and you're a vampire and you get burnt, you're going to stay inside. It's, you know, yeah, this is their group. It's become a kind of new family to them. And, you know, a number of them, I mean, Wolfgang Halbig, again, springs to mind, his wife left him. He is completely estranged from, and so far as I can tell, you know, from his children and from his grandkids. And, you know, these, James Tracy, you know, University of FAU, thank you, Florida Atlantic University. Thank you so much. You'd almost think I didn't. I just, you know, so yeah, so he, you know, for him, I mean, he lost his job. He told me he's an absolute pariah in

academia. You know, he is unemployable. He has a lot of kids and including a child with a lot of difficulties who needs, you know, medical care. And yet he doesn't find a road back for himself. And as I'm getting off the phone, kind of feeling awful at, you know, what he's just described as, you know, his life, he's like, wait, wait, we didn't talk about coronavirus yet. Yeah. So there is an element of psychology there that, you know, I think requires some professional training to understand. Yeah, probably. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. It's really interesting to look at. I'm not going to diagnose that person, but that person's crazy. The person needs a diagnosis. You know, you have these people

like Fetzer and Halbig and Tracy, who you're describing as like, have faced drastically severe consequences. And it's maybe that's what's coming for Alex, but it's so weird that he's been able to, to some degree, just to avoid the fate that these other folks have. Just Duke boys in the general Lee over the laws. That's pretty remarkable. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Well, he's made a lot of money doing this as, you know, you guys know from the documents that have come out and the court cases and, you know, he's, he can hire legal counsel. And so far he's, you know, but I do think the reckoning is coming in terms of these damages trials. I think, I think what I'm hearing from you is that Fetzer's mistake was he didn't start a

pill company. This is, this is the classic mistake. That's where it began. Yeah. That's where it always begins. That's our downfall. Yeah, we need a pill. We got to get a pill company, man. So Elizabeth, I was, I was thinking about this and, you know, the process of writing this book took quite a while. And it's, it's as much as it is a creative process, it's, it's got to be also like a learning experience as well going along. What do you think is like one of the most more central things that you learned over the course of the experience of writing the book? I think I'm not original in saying this, and that's that every book is a lot harder to write than you think it is starting out. That's what a lot of colleagues who have written books told me.

Jordan's complained about that a bit. Yes, Jordan. Don't you think? It's, it's great. The process is awesome. It happens so quick and you never, ever struggle. That's the thing I learned from writing a book. It's not painful in the least. No, no. You never stare at your computer screen and wonder if life is worth living. I mean, the process you're describing is obviously very difficult. And then when you add the subject matter being something that's so uncomfortable to wrestle with, that's kind of the pound things. Yeah. I mean, one thing that I struggle with as a writer just in general, just in my day job at the times is, you know, that sort of that blank paper kind of feeling, I will just put something

down just not to have to look at that. And because one, as long as the page is blank, I can come up with the most amazing things to do to keep me from actually writing. I organized an entire linen closet during this book project before a chapter and it wasn't even my linen closet. You learned procrastination techniques. Really new ones. Yeah. I impressed even myself and I'm used to myself on that. So, but I found that that happened before every chapter. So, and there are 26 chapters. So, I, and I added up all the days that I spent, you know, kind of stalling between chapters because of this total terror of starting a new chapter. And I thought, you know, I could probably finish this book six months earlier. Every, every now and again, but like when I'm

trying to not prepare an episode, I will consider learning a new language or something. Yeah, I find, I find that, that's, that's such an impulse of like, I don't want to, I don't want to even, this material is, is, is ugly. I remember productive though. I don't actually do it. I just think about it. All right. And then sometimes I scroll through Duolingo and I'm like, yeah, maybe, maybe today is the day that I brush up on my French or whatever. Today is Sanskrit day. Exactly. I remember when I was, when I was writing by, I had a blank page and I was, I was doing everything possible to avoid looking at it. And then the next time I turned and looked down, I had written, you're doing all right. Just without, I didn't think about it. It was there

waiting for me when I went back and I was like, I think I need help. I think I'm in trouble. I think you might need a diagnosis. How did you get over that feeling, that blank page? Well, I mean, that was kind of part of, we talked about it before we recorded, but that was part of my chopping up. So I printed everything out and then chopped it up. And so having the physical, like, chopped pieces of paper with stuff that I had already written on it, I could look over at that and then start writing again. So that was really, you know, I'm holding a, you know, two inch piece of paper. It's almost like you're transcribing then. Yeah, it's trying to mix the transcription and turn it into something new, you know? So one thing that I did was,

and this was on the advice of, you know, a guy who's a mentor to me who's written three or four books, his name is David Hoffman, and wonderful, wonderful friend. And he said, one thing you want to do, bang out a bunch of chapters, or if you can swing it, your whole first draft, send it to a group of readers, people you trust, not just journalists, not just people in Washington or in New York or wherever, but like some friends who read a lot of books and, you know, who you trust to give you some honest feedback. So I printed all that out, you know, at 16 chapters, I realized that at 16 chapters, and again, there are 26, I was 100,000 words over. So that's, that's actually an entire book. That's two of my entire books. Yeah, I had 100,000 words from the first 16 chapters

and then write 10 more. So those 10, those following 10 were definitely a little more refined than the first 16. The lesson of the 100,000 was learned. I mean, one thing that I will say absolutely is great is how readable it is. It is so straightforward, well-paced, written, organized that it's, I mean, I read it in, I think, three or four hours, like sat down and just banged it out. It was great. Thank you so much. And thank you for reading it. You're welcome. That's a lovely exchange. I have, I have another quick question for you. Yeah. As far as, so what we found is when you study the misinformation world, if you get good enough at it, you become part of your story. You know, like, from the beginning, the idea with our show, Dan's intent was we're not going to interact

with infowars. I don't want to become part of the story. And in your case, you, he talked about you on the show. Do you feel like you got added into the story more than you wanted to? Oh, that's a great question. I know. What a great exchange. What a great exchange. You know, I suppose it was going to be inevitable because when you're asking people why they do what they do, and you know, it's clear that you're not on their team that they're going to see. And again, the nature of this was these people are getting so much psychic income from what they're doing that anyone on the outside of that asking questions and saying what you just said isn't true is a threat and an enemy. So I think that there was part of that. And then also,

you may have noticed over the past several years that the New York Times in general, is a pretty handy foil for a lot of, you know, folks who tend to believe some of this stuff. Sure. And it's something that has, I'm the right and left, by the way. Pardon me. And it's something that has like some clout attached to it. The New York Times is attacking me is almost like a sign of validation for someone like Alex. It'd be very difficult to resist complaining about it. Yeah. Yeah. And I tried to, like, while some of what I was, you know, I knew had gone on and what I was learning and what people were saying was absolutely

infuriating and, you know, really beyond infuriating. I was trying to understand, you know, I just kept trying to think if I'm passing judgment or I'm just pushing back all the time, I'm not going to gain any fresh insights. I mean, we know this stuff is wrongheaded, you know, we already know that. So they don't need me to tell them that, you know, I'm trying to figure out, like, how did you become this way? And why do you think this? Is it, you know, is it a profit reason? Is it an ideological reason? Is it something that, you know, is there like some need in you that this fulfills? I was trying to understand that just because I wanted the book to actually help our collective societal thinking about this and

maybe help us arrive at some answers, you know, how can we bring people back from the edge or keep them from tipping over in the first place? That's what I was trying to do. And I guess by fighting with people, you're probably not going to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't seem like it. No, you might be able to write a book that's full of action sequences of fights that you have. But yeah, that might not be societally as useful. Yeah. And then I also, you know, the thing I was always obviously holding close was this idea that, you know, these families and telling me their story, you know, they were trusting me with the worst possible day of their life or anyone's life. And they were doing it not because of

anything having to do with me. They were doing it because they wanted you and all of us to understand that this was something that if these folks can come for the parent of a murdered child, they're coming for all of us. And that this is a societal warning that they're trying to raise. And, you know, I just, that's why, and I know that this is a really hard topic. This shooting is something that a lot of, you know, a lot of humans and it's a very human reaction to want to look away from it and not want to relive those details and where you were when it happened and how old your own children were and all of that. But I kind of feel like we owe it to the families to, you know, walk through that with them and understand what happened afterward, because they are trying

to help by telling this story. Wow. Yeah. That's a great, great thought. I feel like it doesn't get better than that. No, I feel like that may be a great thought to close on, because I think that there's a lot to think about there. Yeah, we're not going to be able to top that one. So since you get the best line, I think we'll just end it. Oh, well, I just, I'm so grateful to you guys for having me on and for reading the book and really for, I mean, you guys helped me so so much in this book. I mean, Dan, just, you know, you know so much about the way InfoWars and Alex Jones operates. It's unfortunate. And I know you're going to feel embarrassed that I'm, you know, giving you, but you really deserve so much credit for helping me understand this guy

and where he's coming from. Well, that's actually probably, it's probably good that we, we give full disclosure that I did, we did speak in the process of you writing the book. Yes. Yeah. I don't want to try and hide that, that point. No, not at all. No, not at all. I mean, you guys helped me a lot to understand, you know, that corner of, of what this book is. And it's a big corner, believe me. I'm really grateful for you using the plural. That's really nice of you to really include me, even though you don't have to. It's the royal you died. Well, I was, I was thrilled to be able to put this information to use because I mean, there's a lot of, you know, just like you were talking about with Bill Ogden and the experience

of watching a ton of Alex's content. It's incredibly painful if you're actually engaging with it and, and looking at it critically. And I think going through the process of learning so much about this would be useless if it wasn't for something that wasn't used for something. So thank you for providing something of an outlet for that. Oh my gosh. Yeah. No, I just remember all the time saying, what do you think he was saying when he said this or on this particular date? Or do you have this particular video? Or, you know, it was just, you know, if the effort is to try and understand why this happens. Thank you so much. You're, you're quite welcome and thank, and thank you. People can find the book everywhere, right? Where do people get books?

Where do people get books? Barnes and Noble. I didn't even bother with the prediction. I just put it on a website. I just like take it. Cheers. I just had a mini panic. I guess it's people download books now. Yeah. That's it. That's all I did. You can get it at the library. You can get it at your favorite local bookstore. Wait, Trump didn't kill libraries. I thought Trump ended it. I thought Trump ended libraries. Didn't Trump kill all libraries? I don't think so. Only his own presidential library maybe. Is this book going to be in the Trump presidential library? That is a good question. He's in it a lot. Library of Congress. Yeah. And again, it's called Sandy Hook in American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth. Thank you again, Elizabeth. We appreciate you

joining us. Yes. Thank you so much. And thank you both. Really appreciate it. Well, folks, I hope you, I hope you enjoyed that. Nice to take a little break, a little breaky, a little break for an interview. Because man, shit's about to get crazy. I mean, we're just doing better today. Well, we had Enrique Tario just got arrested today as we're recording these intros. Yeah. And that was part of a conspiracy charge. Right. That also includes Rambo Joe Biggs, former Infowars employee. Seditious conspiracy. I believe it was actually just conspiracy to obstruct an official procedure. Oh, that's nice. But in the indictment, it does involve one at one point. Enrique Tario meets with Stuart Rhodes in an underground parking garage.

So okay. All right. Sneaky stuff might be a foot. It was it was fucking deep throat there too. Everybody, the whole gang was down there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just everybody getting together like, wait, what are you doing here? Yeah. So some some crazy stuff may be about to pop off. And so it's nice. Nice to just like get ready for that incoming. Yeah. Yeah. Barrage of of shit. Yep. So yeah, we we will be back Jordan. Probably dealing with that probably if Alex decides to deal with it. If not, I guess we might talk about the fucking convoy in DC coming to you this again. Coming to you from an undisclosed location in Mexico for no reason whatsoever. Hey, everybody, I'm recording this from the underground parking garage where Stuart Rhodes

and Enrique Tario had a clandestine meeting. Sounds great amazingly. Acoustics. Yeah. Amazing. Wonderful. But yeah, we'll be back. But until then, we have a website. Indeed we do. It's knowledgefight.com. Yep. We are also on Twitter. Indeed we are. It's at knowledge underscore fight and that go to bed Jordan. Yep. We'll be back. But until then, I'm Neo. I'm Leo. I'm DZX Clark. I'm Dr. Marbles. And now here comes the sex robot, Andy and Kansas. You're on the earth. Thanks for holding. So Alex, I'm a first time caller. I'm a huge fan. I love your work. I love you.