The shirt-ripping Alex Jones always inserts unhinged rants into his conspiracy theory-fueled Infowars program. That’s his shtick and, and casual viewers (of the non-die-hard variety) may wonder whether someone can truly be that insane. To be certain, some episodes are so clearly over-the-top that they’re obviously fake. Yet Jones’ commitment to yelling about chemicals in the water and false flags would lead one to believe that he subscribes to at least some of his theories. Well, his lawyer is now arguing in court that Jones is simply “playing a character” just like “a performance artist.”
Jones is currently embroiled in a nasty custody case with ex-wife Kelly Jones, who argues that their children should no longer live with him, which has been the arrangement since their 2015 divorce. Attorney Randall Wilhite aims to convince District Judge Orlinda Naranjo that Kelly’s claim that his client is unstable is unfair because Jones is acting.
Whereas Kelly points toward recent Infowars episodes that feature Jones challenging Alec Baldwin to a fight and unleashing a profane, unglued rant against Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff as proof that he’s not all there. She’s putting her foot down and demanding either sole or joint custody of her three children with Alex, and here’s part of her pretrial hearing argument:
“He’s not a stable person,” she said of the man with whom her 14-year-old son and 9- and 12-year-old daughters have lived since her 2015 divorce. “He says he wants to break Alec Baldwin’s neck. He wants J-Lo to get raped.”
“I’m concerned that he is engaged in felonious behavior, threatening a member of Congress,” she said, referring to his recent comments about California Democrat Adam Schiff. “He broadcasts from home. The children are there, watching him broadcast.”
In response, Wilhite said that using Jones’ Infowars persona to evaluate his client’s fitness as a father would be “like judging Jack Nicholson in a custody dispute based on his performance as the Joker in Batman.” And so, a Travis County jury will soon be chosen to determine “whether there is a difference between the public and private Alex Jones” as part of this custody case, which is simply mind boggling. Is it even possible for Alex Jones to find a jury box full of his peers?
Well, the Austin American-Statesman reminds everyone that Jones caters to a massive audience — he can boast of 7.6 million unique visitors per month on the InfoWars site and over 2 million YouTube subscribers. With those numbers in mind, yeah, there’s plenty of conspiracy theorists who could be considered his peers in a loose sense. Unless … he’s really only acting?