USA TODAY International Edition
Court trying to find the real Alex Jones
Boisterous behavior just for show, he says in Texas custody case
Who is the real Alex AUSTIN Jones?
That’s the question at the center of a contentious child custody battle playing out in Travis County Court between the online/ radio provocateur Alex Jones and his ex- wife, Kelly Jones. The radio host’s lawyers have characterized his boisterous online persona as “performance art” and a “character” he plays, while attorneys for the ex- wife maintain the shows are proof that he’s unfit to parent the couple’s three children. Kelly Jones is seeking full custody of the children.
Jones, who began his career in the early ’ 90s as an Austin- based public- access television show host, got a surge of publicity last year when then- presidential candidate Donald Trump applauded his work and repeated some of Jones’ theories, including allega- tions that there was widespread voter fraud in the election against Trump.
“It is surreal to talk about issues here on air and then wordfor- word hear Trump say it two days later,” Jones said in August.
But if Jones’ signature online rants are more performance and less impassioned convictions, it could alter the ego he’s spent dec- ades building up, said Brian Rosenwald, a University of Pennsylvania lecturer who’s working on a book on conservative talk radio.
“It’s performance theater,” Rosenwald said of the proliferation of popular conservative talk show hosts like Jones, Rush Limbaugh and others. “But if the authenticity of a host is undermined, it could be devastating.”
A libertarian, Jones, 43, has built a steady audience the past two decades by trafficking conspiracy theories. Among them: that the U. S. government blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 and that the 9/ 11 terror attacks were an “inside job” planned and carried out by the federal government. His Infowars. com site draws more than 6 million unique visitors a month; his YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers.
More recently, Jones contended that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, which left 20 children and six adults dead, never happened and that actors played the roles of the schoolaged victims. In November, he clarified his stance, stating, “I don’t know what the truth is. All I know is that the official story of Sandy Hook has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.”
Last week, Leonard Pozner, the father of one of the Sandy Hook victims, 6- year- old Noah, said he would like to be in the courtroom with Jones during his custody battle. Pozner and his family have been inundated with threats and harassment from conspiracy theorists who insist his son never existed, he told The Daily Beast.
“I wish I could be there in the courtroom to stare him down to remind him of how he’s throwing salt on a wound and so he can remember how he handed out salt for other people to throw on mine,” Pozner told the news site.
On Thursday, Jones testified in his custody case, oscillating between backing his courtroom defense of a gentle dad and defending his boisterous online persona. He’s fundamentally the same person he is on the radio, he said, but none of the “bombasity” or rage he exudes on air follows him home. “I don’t want to think about work when I go home,” he said. “I want to swim in the pool and eat hamburgers.”
During a tense exchange, Jones emotionally objected to a line of questioning, telling opposing attorney Bobby Newman, “You have no decency, man. Zero.”
Between hearings, Jones defended his pumped- up persona as genuine and blamed the media for misconstruing his lawyer’s words. “I can’t even read off a teleprompter,” he said. “I can’t even control myself. Everyone knows it around here. I’m the opposite of some scripted person.”