On Monday, Alex Jones and his Infowars conspiracy-theory minions claimed to have secured permanent press credentials for the White House press briefing room, but is it fake news? The short answer is “yes.” To dive a little deeper, Jones made this same claim a few days after Trump’s inauguration, and this also turned out to be a false assertion, which was immediately shot down by Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. This time around, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who led last year’s Senate gun-control filibuster, lashed out in disgust at the very idea of the White House giving cred to Jones’ outlet, which still maintains that the Sandy Hook massacre was orchestrated by the government with actors subbing in as grieving parents.
Fortunately and although Infowars followed up with a faux-report, none of this is real, but it’s still worth a walk through. Infowars dropped its sensational (false) tidbit while the White House PR machinery was otherwise occupied with overseas Trump antics — getting swatted by Melania, dropping a note into the Western Wall, and possibly admitting to revealing Israel as an intel source to Russians. In the spirit of playing while the cats are away, Jerome Corsi, Washington Bureau Chief, stood inside an empty briefing room and claimed to have secured permanent credentials.
https://twitter.com/jerome_corsi/status/866665355950907394
Murphy swiftly responded by tweeting, “I want to throw up.” And if Corsi had been telling the truth, there’d be a valid reason to lose one’s lunch.
I want to throw up. @POTUS has granted legitimacy to a group that believes Sandy Hook was a hoax carried out by paid actors. https://t.co/uMBuIqNMUb
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) May 22, 2017
At that point, some on-site journalists — including Trey Yingst (OANN) and Mike Warren (Weekly Standard) — did some digging and soon discovered that Corsi had only obtained a day pass. One might wonder why Infowars decided to resurrect this fake story once more, but perhaps only a conspiracy theorist would understand.
CONTEXT: @infowars was given a day pass White House credential, not a permanent press pass. High school students can apply for day passes.
— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) May 22, 2017
https://twitter.com/MichaelRWarren/status/866718692729663492