This segment originally aired Jan. 6, 2016 on VICE News Tonight on HBO.
Alex Jones is one of America’s best-known and most influential conspiracy theorists. Jones’ radio program and online television network reach millions, with frothing rants claiming the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax and that 9/11 was an inside job.With the election of Donald Trump, whose candidacy he vigorously championed, Jones’ fringe movement has shouted its way into the mainstream.“I was just an early part of the wave of populism and wanting prosperity and wanting true liberalism,” Jones told VICE News correspondent Michael Moynihan. “The mainstream media just ignored and ignored and ignored, laughing at flyover country. The truth is we’d already taken the nation back psychologically many, many years ago.”