The New York Times managed to score an interview with Edgar Welch, the North Carolina man who’s become better known as the Pizzagate shooter, and the whole thing is just astonishing and heartbreaking and sad and frightening.
For benefit of those of you unfamiliar with the Pizzagate story, some background: it centers around a conspiracy that was spread on social media by people like Gen Michael Flynn and his son — and further fueled by influential cuckoo bird Alex Jones — that claims that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta, who ran her presidential campaign, have been running a child sex slavery ring out of the basement of a DC-area pizza joint, Comet Ping-Pong. (Yeah.) An armed Welch showed up at the restaurant on Sunday to “investigate” the whole thing, firing shots in the process. Fortunately no one was hurt.
Which brings us to this: Welch, who is 28 and married with two young children, was apprehended and arrested and Adam Goldman of the Times was allowed to interview him for 45 minutes via videoconference. He said he woke up on Sunday morning and told his wife and kids “he had some things to do.” He told the reporter that he felt his “heart breaking over the thought of innocent people suffering” and that he wanted to “shine some light on” Pizzagate. However, he said that when he arrived at the restaurant he says it became evident that “the intel on this wasn’t 100 percent.”
When Goldman asked Welch about how he came to learn about Pizzagate, he said the following (emphasis ours):
He said it was through word of mouth. After recently having internet service installed at his house, he was “really able to look into it.” He said that substantial evidence from a combination of sources had left him with the “impression something nefarious was happening.” He said one article on the subject led to another and then another. He said he did not like the term fake news, believing it was meant to diminish stories outside the mainstream media, which he does not completely trust.
Here’s hoping the purveyors of fake news like this guy — who undoubtably helped poison Welch’s vulnerable mind with the flood of articles he says he read on the subject — at least have a little trouble sleeping at night.