Alex Jones both dismisses and reiterates his Sandy Hook views in Megyn Kelly interview

Tonight, against the wishes of virtually everyone on the planet, NBC aired Megyn Kelly’s interview with Infowars host/chili monster Alex Jones, and as teased by all of the pre-air hype and controversy, they spent a significant portion of the interview talking about Jones’ history of using his show to spread an utterly monstrous conspiracy theory about the Sandy Hook shooting being a hoax. Entertainment Weekly sat through the whole thing, and it says that Jones “initially attempted to backtrack” his Sandy Hook bullshit, but he consistently torpedoed his backtracks by reiterating why he argued that Sandy Hook was a hoax in the first place.

His basic justification was that he was playing devil’s advocate, and that he was simply discussing the possibility that everyone is lying when they say their child or loved one was killed in the shooting, but he prefaced that by admitting that he does believe there was “some cover-up and some manipulation.” Kelly later pointed out that he specifically declared that “the whole [shooting] was fake” in 2014, but he claims to have acknowledged that “some of it” looked real at the time, even if he couldn’t get past the notion that “the kids circling in and out of the building with their hands up” looked “like a drill.”

Presumably not wanting to look like a total asshole, Jones noted, “I tend to believe that children really did die there,” but he even had to undercut that by saying that if you “look at all the other evidence on the other side,” then he can see why “other people believe that nobody died there.” Entertainment Weekly says a voiceover from Kelly cut in at that point to remind viewers that “there is no evidence on the other side.”

Of course, there are mountains of evidence to support the fact that a bunch of children were murdered at Sandy Hook, and Kelly actually sat down with a man whose 6-year-old son died in the shooting. The man, Neil Haslin, said that it’s “disrespectful” to him and every other person who lost someone that day when Jones spews out his conspiracy theory bullshit, and when Kelly (weirdly) pointed out that her interview with Jones will air on Father’s Day, Haslin said, “I think he’s blessed to have his children to spend the day with, to speak to. I don’t have that.” Jones, for the record, lost custody of his kids back in April, and it was largely because of the hateful, dangerously outrageous stuff he says on his show.

The interview wasn’t all about Sandy Hook, though, as Kelly also asked Jones about the time he got sued by Chobani after blaming the yogurt company—which is dedicated to hiring refugees to work at its planet in Idaho—for a series of sexual assaults. Jones was forced to release a statement retracting his racist comments, but it seems like that apology wasn’t exactly heartfelt. Speaking with Kelly, Jones said that he blames “the media” for something, and he implied that he has some kind of dirt on Chobani that made the company “real happy to get out of that lawsuit.” Weirdly—though not at all, really—he seems to be forgetting the fact that he was getting sued by Chobani, so if he really had some huge bombshell about the company, he could’ve gone to court and made it public instead of immediately backing down, but that would require him to have some kind of awareness of reality.

It’s also worth noting that Jones predicted that his comments would be misconstrued by Kelly and her show, so in order to avoid the possibility of her editing the interview in a way that made him look bad, he supposedly secretly recorded his entire interaction with her. He said that he’d release the audio tonight, but at this point, he hasn’t followed through on that threat yet.