Elon Musk Invites Alex Jones to Explain That “Whole Sandy Hook Thing”

Alex Jones says he was just playing “devil’s advocate” when he spent all those years claiming the Sandy Hook shooting was a false flag operation.

Elon Musk spoke with the far-right conspiracy theorist during a livestream on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday. When Musk asked Jones about “the whole Sandy Hook thing,” Jones tried to shirk responsibility.

The livestream, co-hosted by Musk and influencer Mario Nawfal, occurred shortly after Musk restored the X account of the disgraced InfoWars host. On Saturday, Musk had posted an X poll asking users whether he should “reinstate” Jones on the platform. About 70 percent of users voted “Yes.” Jones and his InfoWars account were initially banned from Twitter in 2018 for “abusive behavior.”

As part of replatforming the conspiracy theorist, Musk gave Jones the space to explain away his misinformation campaign, in which he tried to convince the public that the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which killed 20 children and six teachers and staff, was staged. Sandy Hook families secured a $1.5 billion judgment against the InfoWars host after winning a lawsuit over his conspiracy theories.

“Obviously, it would be heartless and cruel to deny a school shooting of children or attack the parents or anyone who was involved,” Musk said, before giving Jones the opportunity to lie about having done that very thing.

“Thank you for allowing me back into the public square so that I can actually tell the world what really happened,” Jones said.

Jones proceeded to make several excuses for his actions, explaining that he’d never gone to college and was not professionally trained. “I had a very small operation and did not even understand how powerful I was,” Jones said.

When the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary happened, “the internet exploded,” Jones said. “It was the top story off and on for years, with all these professors and former school safety people and all of them saying they believed it was a drill, and I simply covered them covering that.”

Jones added that he has already apologized many times and is sorry if he hurt anyone’s feelings.

“I apologize on every show. And I’ll say it again, I apologize that I just gave my commentary because I’m really just a guy … talk radio host. So I do that on the internet. I just take calls, and interview guests, and that I play devil’s advocate,” Jones explained. “And if that hurt people’s feelings, I apologize. But I did not send people to your houses. I did not pee on graves. I don’t know any of the stuff that went on.”

Jones’s return to X is just another of the many ways that Musk has allowed the platform to embrace and empower alt-right voices, making it increasingly less usable for any sane person.

Even Donald Trump’s own legal team can’t predict his next moves.

On Sunday, the former president announced that he actually will not be testifying in his civil fraud trial as planned on Monday.

Trump’s decision was quite a departure from what his attorney Alina Habba said just two days earlier.

“He is so firmly against what is happening in this court and so firmly for the old America that we know, not this America, that he will take that stand on Monday,” Habba assured the press. “He will open himself up to whatever they want because he’s not afraid. People that are afraid cower. President Trump doesn’t cower.”

On Truth Social, however, Trump wrote that he already testified and has nothing more to say.

“THIS IS A COMPLETE & TOTAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE (BIDEN CAMPAIGN!) WITCH HUNT, THAT WILL DO NOTHING BUT KEEP BUSINESSES OUT OF NEW YORK,” the 2024 Republican candidate wrote Sunday. “I WILL NOT BE TESTIFYING ON MONDAY.”

The civil fraud trial comes from New York Attorney General Letitia James who filed a lawsuit accusing top Trump Organization executives of misleading insurers and banks with inflated financial statements.

In previous testimony in the trial, Trump essentially admitted to fraud—claiming it was the responsibility of lenders to fact-check his organization’s financial documents. During his last testimony on November 6, Trump was scolded by Justice Arthur Engoron.

“No speeches,” Engoron said. “This is not a political rally.”

This week’s GOP-led impeachment effort against the President is so extreme that even a Fox & Friends host had a hard time getting on board.

Fox anchor Steve Doocy appeared taken aback and apprehensive to participate in a Monday morning segment on the show in which his co-hosts misrepresented outdated polling data to allege that Hunter Biden’s dealings were shady “enough” to warrant unseating his father from the presidency.

“The Republicans at this point don’t have—they’ve got a lot of ledgers and spreadsheets—but they have not connected the dots,” Doocy said while his co-hosts squirmed.

“They’ve connected the dots, the Department of Justice did, on Hunter, but they have not shown where Joe Biden, you know, did anything illegally,” he added.

The segment reached back to a September poll by CNN that found the majority of Americans—61 percent—felt that the president was involved in his son’s business dealings, while 38 percent felt that Biden didn’t have any involvement in his son’s business during his vice presidency.

But a lot has happened since September, including a shallow House impeachment inquiry—the first in U.S. history to move forward without a vote—that failed to present solid evidence of corruption or bribery and included witnesses and members publicly admitting that they did not have any evidence that rose to the level of impeaching Biden, reported Mediaite.

Doocy then redirected attention toward Hunter Biden’s closed-door deposition scheduled for Wednesday, announcing that Republicans are threatening contempt of Congress if the president’s son is a no-show.

“Ultimately, on this show, we’ve been calling for Hunter to go and sit in a chair on Capitol Hill in front of the TV cameras for the last year,” Doocy said. “Now Hunter’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, says he will do that, but Comer and Jim Jordan say, no, it’s not negotiable, he’s got to be in private. According to Hunter Biden’s team, they don’t want to do it because of leaks and stuff like that.”

The organizers behind the December charity pub crawl lovingly dubbed SantaCon appear to be a little heavier on the con than the spirit of giving.

Over the last decade, the group’s organizers claim to have raised more than $1 million for charitable causes, according to their website, but not much of that money seems to have gone to charity. Instead, they blew more than a third of the funds on bad crypto investments and groups tied to Burning Man, ultimately giving less than a fifth of that money to actual nonprofits, according to a Gothamist analysis of the group’s financial documents.

The group’s biggest act of giving—more than $66,000—went to a for-profit film production crew called Spectaculum Productions, which made the medical fraud documentary At Your Cervix.

The lion’s share of the money raised by SantaCon—$832,000, or 59 percent—goes to maintenance, according to the group’s founder and director, Stefan Pildes, who told Gothamist that the bills add up for the single-day event, citing expenditures like temporary staff, street permits, and D.J.s.

“It’s not a small undertaking,” Pildes said.

SantaCon falls under the helm of a tax-exempt nonprofit, Participatory Safety. And while anybody can join the citywide bar hop for free, they also offer participants a $15 “Santa Badge” that comes with additional benefits. That has helped the outfit grow tremendously, though the money is specifically described as set aside for “Santa’s charity drive,” according to SantaCon’s website.

“Regardless of what they want to label it, throwing the party is not a charitable activity,” Lloyd Mayer, a Notre Dame University Law School professor, told the outlet. “It’s great to go to this party, right? But don’t pat yourself on the back that you’re helping out the Girl Scouts.” SantaCon organizers and participants regularly tout their group’s charitable side as a shield against allegations that it is a drunken free-for-all that leaves parts of New York City filthy. Even without any waste—and there seems to be quite a bit of it—it’s a lackluster charitable organization, raising barely more than $100,000 a year.

Russia resumed its cruise missile attack on Kyiv after an 80-day hiatus early Friday morning, an action that critics say is the direct result of Republicans blocking a foreign aid package to help Ukraine.

The two-hour barrage was impeded by air defenses that thwarted all missiles headed for the Ukrainian capital, according to the Kyiv city military administration. Other missiles resulted in casualties, including one that struck the city of Pavlohrad, which killed one and injured four others, and another that landed in the eastern Kharkiv region and killed one person and injured another seven, according to CNN.

The missile barrage comes just two days after Senate Republicans voted to block a $110.5 billion emergency spending bill for Ukraine and Israel. Putin allies celebrated America’s right-wing party for what they interpreted as the first step in the total withdrawal of U.S. support from Ukraine.

“Well done, Republicans! They’re standing firm! That’s good for us,” said propagandist Olga Skabeeva on Russian state TV, grinning.

“This will be a great revelation to other countries. It is even more dangerous to be a friend of the United States than its enemy. In the end, they will abandon you, leaving nothing but the scorched earth on your territory,” said Golovanov Time host Roman Golovanov, according to The Daily Beast.

And Putin loyalists made it clear they had another reason to celebrate, predicting that the failed aid package would lend itself to the downfall of President Joe Biden and the subsequent return of Donald Trump.

“The downfall of Ukraine means the downfall of Biden! Two birds with one stone,” said America analyst Dmitry Drobnitsky, the Beast reported.

The foreign aid package is tied up in a pseudo hostage situation as Republicans hound Democrats for an extreme border security package that includes Trump-tried policies—something that the White House has said it’s open to.