Exclusive: How The Onion Finally Shut Up Alex Jones for Good

Summary

Pablo Torre Finds Out

"Exclusive: How The Onion Finally Shut Up Alex Jones for Good"

Release Date: April 20, 2026
Host: Pablo Torre (The Athletic)
Guests: Ben Collins (CEO, Global Tetrahedron/The Onion), Chris Matty (Attorney for Sandy Hook families)
Summary By: Podcast Summarizer AI

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Episode Overview

In this in-depth "talkumentary," Pablo Torre explores one of the strangest and most consequential twists in the history of misinformation: The Onion, America’s legendary satirical paper, has finally acquired—and intends to shut down—Alex Jones’s Infowars. Featuring Ben Collins (CEO of The Onion/Global Tetrahedron) and Sandy Hook families' attorney Chris Matty, the episode details the legal and cultural battle to defang Alex Jones, the bizarre mechanics of his bankruptcy, and what will come next for one of the world’s most notorious conspiracy machines.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. How Misinformation Became a Business

(03:36–13:22)

• Rise of Alex Jones:
  Alex Jones's career transformed from peddling wild conspiracies (chemicals turning frogs gay, child trafficking on Mars) to running a lucrative misinformation empire.

  • Notable Quote:
    "If you say ‘believe my stupid, and the only way to stop that stupid is this boner pill I’m selling you on the internet,’ and then suddenly you’re a millionaire… That’s not a speech issue. That’s an FTC issue." – Ben Collins (15:16)

• Personal Impact of Conspiracies:
  Ben Collins shares how Jones’s culture of denialism personally affected him when his friend’s girlfriend was killed in a live televised shooting, only to have her death called a hoax online.

• The Sandy Hook Turning Point:
  Alex Jones’s denial of the Sandy Hook massacre represents the darkest intersection of profit and cruelty:

  • "One day you drop [your kids] off at school and then they no longer exist… And then… there is an economy around trying to make it clear that your child never existed at all." – Ben Collins (11:55)

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2. Legal Reckoning: Defamation and the $1.4B Verdict

(21:34–34:08)

• Lawsuits & Judgments:
  Multiple defamation lawsuits in Connecticut and Texas led to record-setting damages against Jones (totaling $1.4B):

  • Major courtroom moment: Alex Jones’s lawyers mistakenly send all his texts to opposing counsel; this “Perry Mason moment” is replayed with delight (23:05–24:13).
  • Quote:
    "12 days ago your attorneys messed up and sent me an entire digital copy of your entire cell phone…" – Plaintiff’s attorney in court (23:27)
  • Despite the verdict, Alex Jones publicly mocked the damages, believing he’d avoid paying.

• Why Jones Lost:
  "He didn’t participate in the cases… He thought he was above it." – Ben Collins (22:21)

• Alex Jones’s Bankruptcy Gambit:
  Jones filed for bankruptcy with hopes of shielding assets and dragging out litigation, including thousands of domain names (e.g., GoblinLove.net).

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3. The Onion’s Plot: Buying Infowars

(34:09–41:03)

• Genesis of the Bid:
  When Infowars is put up for sale (legally required by bankruptcy), The Onion’s Ben Collins sees both an opportunity and a civic responsibility:
  • "If we buy this, it goes to the Sandy Hook families… If we don’t, he might just get it back… so we’re like, well, it’s either us or nobody." – Ben Collins (34:12)
• Reaction from Families & Legal Team:
  While some families and their attorney Chris Matty were initially unsure, they recognized the potential both to shutter Infowars and reclaim its platform for good.

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4. Chaos in Bankruptcy Court: Auctions and Political Intrigue

(36:31–53:41)

• Post-2024 Election Fallout:
  Following Trump’s re-election, The Onion bid $1.75M plus a “sweetener” (claims waiver) for Infowars, defeating Jones’s own shell companies.
• Alex Jones’s Reaction:
  On air, Jones lost control—calling The Onion a “front group” and railing about “Gestapo” tactics (38:40–39:49).
• Legal Obstacles:
  The winning bid was initially rejected by a judge as Jones vowed “fight all the way to the end” (41:18–41:53).
  • The judge’s hesitation: "You’re not buying Infowars… you’re buying Alex Jones’s personal harassment campaign for the rest of your life.” – Ben Collins (45:02)
• Department of Justice Pressure:
  Trump’s DOJ (via associate deputy AG Ed Martin) sent threatening letters to the Sandy Hook families’ attorney, suggesting government retaliation—an “active Sandy Hook trutherism” from official DC letterhead (51:10).
• Receiver, Fear, and Delay:
  The court-appointed receiver and judge waver, apparently fearing harassment and potential political backlash (48:39–50:15).

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5. The Endgame: Infowars Is Finally Shut Down

(53:41–57:32)

• Alex Jones Runs Out of Money:
  In spring 2026, with debts mounting and no funds left to pay rent ($75k/month) or keep the website and studio running, the receiver agrees to sell Infowars to The Onion (55:41).
• The Onion’s Takeover:
  Ben Collins confirms: "The Onion has finally acquired Infowars… We've taken over the Infowars studio and the IP and the website and all that stuff." (57:42)
• What Comes Next:
  • The Onion plans to turn Infowars into a home for comedians and satire about misinformation, led by talents like Tim Heidecker and Mia De Pasquale.
  • Families of Sandy Hook victims will benefit financially from the sale and are invited to visit the former Infowars headquarters—a symbolic and personal victory.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the state of journalism:
  "The actual reporters left are the kids who are currently in journalism school… that’s the thing that’s going to get me a journalism job—scoops, information." – Ben Collins (04:01)
• On the absurdity of Jones's defense:
  "Split your gum out, Mr. Jones." – Judge Maya Gamble (24:58)
  "It’s not gum. I had my tooth pulled, so I had some gauze…" – Alex Jones (25:01)
• On the financial model:
  "That's not strength. That's actually like the opposite. That's insecurity. Strength is knowing that you're going to walk into a bunch of people saying insane sh*t about you and keep walking." – Ben Collins (45:19)
• On the symbolic power of the transfer:
  "Hopefully we get access to the actual facility and it's not like booby trapped or whatever, but like [the families] can go in there whenever they want and put their feet up if they want… what happened to them won’t happen to anybody else." – Ben Collins (60:56)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:36–13:22 — The roots of Alex Jones’s business and personal stories of conspiracy harm
• 21:34–29:58 — Lawsuits, legal tactics, and the $1.4B Sandy Hook verdict
• 23:05–24:13 — The legendary "Perry Mason moment" at Jones's trial
• 34:09–38:12 — How and why The Onion decided to bid for Infowars
• 38:40–40:03 — Alex Jones’s on-air meltdown as he loses Infowars
• 41:18–45:19 — Why winning Infowars at auction is less a victory and more a “personal harassment campaign”
• 51:10–53:41 — DOJ interference and political intimidation
• 55:41–57:32 — The final collapse: Infowars runs out of money, Onion gets the asset
• 57:42–58:46 — The Onion’s future plans for Infowars, hiring comedians, supporting families

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Tone & Language

• The conversation balances sharp satirical wit (befitting the topic and guests) with earnest concern for truth, justice, and the impact on Sandy Hook families.
• Frequent dark humor, especially regarding legal absurdities and Alex Jones’s public persona.
• The show’s atmosphere is energetic, self-aware, and determined—with moments of both catharsis and righteous anger.

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Final Takeaway

This episode isn’t just a victory lap for fact over fiction or satire over conspiracy—it’s about the struggle to reclaim reality, dignity, and decency from those who profit off lies. Shutting down Infowars is a rare story in which mockery, law, and morality aligned to silence a force that did real world harm—offering both closure and a new beginning.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

[Alex Jones]

Oh, we're getting shut down. We have we beat so many attacks and. But finally we're shutting down at the

[Pablo Torre]

middle of next month, right after this ad.

[T-Mobile Advertiser / Commercial Voice]

We're lost and kickoff's coming up. I don't want to miss the lineup. I'm gonna ask that man for directions.

[Pablo Torre]

Hi there.

[T-Mobile Advertiser / Commercial Voice]

We're trying to get to the stadium.

[T-Mobile Representative]

Well, you're going to take a left at the old Oak Tre this here road.

[Pablo Torre]

Nah, I'm just kidding.

[T-Mobile Representative]

Let me get my phone out.

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[Pablo Torre]

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[Ben Collins]

I'm really proud of you, what you've done. I'm not kidding. Like it's really hard to do what you've done here and it's hard to do journalism at all. And you took a, you bet on yourself and you hit the jackpot. So I'm really proud of you.

[Pablo Torre]

I think both of us have probably felt this where it's like, man, the bar's real insurance.

[Ben Collins]

There's nobody, nobody's picking up the phone anymore to do any kind of journalism. It's crazy.

[Pablo Torre]

It's, it's a market opportunity as well as the problem.

[Ben Collins]

The actual reporters left are the kids who are currently in journalism school because they're being told like old fashioned tricks on how to do stuff. Right? Like they realize like that's actually the thing that's going to get me a journalism job is scoops information. Exactly.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes, absolutely.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Accurate, descriptive summary of the thing we're here to talk about. And the, by the way, the exclusive big announcement you're here to make with us here today. So thank you, Ben Collins, for doing that. For those who are unfamiliar with your current job, what is the title that you have?

[Ben Collins]

I'm the CEO of Global Tetrahedron. It's primarily a puppy mill. That's how we make most of our money. A clandestine puppy mill. We also print a newspaper called the Onion, which you may have heard of. Good newspaper.

[Pablo Torre]

It's so good. I dare say that you've become the foremost antagonist of the one and only

[Alex Jones]

Alex Jones when you realize how fake it all is. The football, the Basketball, the, the Lady Gaga, the Justin Bieber. Now the globalists are pouring on all the heat they can pushing their hive mind Borg collectivist zombie public system. I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin frogs gay. Do you understand that? Liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, happy fun.

[Ben Collins]

La la la.

[Alex Jones]

Human smuggling, fentanyl deaths, forced government, euthanasia. Patriot, patriot, patriot. Vampire. Nationalist, mental retard, eugenicist. A scared man, really. Retard, retard, traitor. Vampire, vampire. Next level, Moses.

[Pablo Torre]

I don't know if I've given enough consideration to vampire as a really key feature of his work.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, 50% of people are vampires.

[Pablo Torre]

By the way, referring to that clip, apparently. Apparently. By the way, the visuals on where he's saying a bunch of that stuff from there is a very familiar microphone that has kind of been an archetype for all podcasters, let's be honest, since then, it's from inside of this bunker at this apparently undisclosed location in the woods of Austin, Texas. And that is where the headquarters of Infowars are located.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. Guess how much rent is there, by the way.

[Pablo Torre]

What's, what's rent? Run Alex Jones.

[Ben Collins]

$75,000 a month. I swear to God.

[Pablo Torre]

We're gonna get into the finances. The finer economic data points around this. But InfoWars is the foremost conspiracy newsroom scare quotes around the word news. Obviously the scariest quotes around the wor. It's been described by one of Alex Jones's former employees who has written since a book about his experiences as quote unquote cult like. And Alex Jones himself chooses a different term to describe it. In a tweet from 2016, he says, and you've certainly seen this photo before. Yeah, there's a war on for your [e-mail] is the 21st century cavalry exclamation point. And beneath which is a photo of what?

[Ben Collins]

That's a Putinesque Alex Jones shirtless atop a horse. I would call him barrel chest is a really nice way of putting it. Right. A bowling ball chested is probably another way of putting it as well.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. And he's wearing jeans.

[Ben Collins]

He is wearing jeans. Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

Before RFK Jr. Was wearing jeans and exercising, Alex Jones was the Venn diagram of all of these, these conspiratorial scammer characters. And his website, by the way, like the headlines over there. I mean there are some classics like Lady Gaga halftime show, A satanic ritual bombshell. Barack Obama conclusively outed a CIA creation, NWO New World order obviously opening thousands of portals to ancient demons. Top insider confirms Hillary odor problem, comma, actual demon question mark. When did you first encounter Alex Jones?

[Ben Collins]

This is not going to be a fun story. Quickly. I'm just going to be. I'm going to go back into time and it's going to be sad. And I'll come back to the.

[Pablo Torre]

Please.

[Ben Collins]

Okay. So I was working at the Daily Beast. I was a news editor. And one day I woke up and my friend's girlfriend was shot and killed on live tv. This was in Roanoke, Virginia. Her name's Alice Parker. And my friend Chris Hurst, we had a, like, what we call a podcast or something together in college. You know, he was an anchor at this news station in Roanoke and his girlfriend was out in the field and a disgruntled ex employee put a GoPro on his head. And it was, I think it was the first ever live streamed murder of anybody.

[Pablo Torre]

I remember this. Had no idea that you had a relationship.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I freaked out and I just, like, left the newsroom. My editor was like, get out of here. Too close to this. And I was like, you're right. But over the next few days, I started to look up all of these people who were calling it a false flag. Because if you, at that point in time, if you googled his name, the very top things would be like, he is a CIA plant. She never existed. This is a false flag gun control thing. These are all notes that stank heavily of Alex Jones.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Ben Collins]

So over the next few weeks, I did a story where I just called everybody who made those claims and remember one guy, I would let them talk for half an hour at the end and I would just say, I'm just letting you know I hear you. But I know Chris Hurst. If he's a CAA agent, he sucks. He's a terrible fantasy baseball player. He's garbage at this point. Um, he's a real man. And they would just say, well, that's just what I believe. I've just. I just believe this. And really, at the end of the day, it. It comes from the culture that Alex created.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. The idea that there was in fact video.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And despite that.

[Ben Collins]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

You could deny what seemed to be, when we were growing up, the most undisputable way. Yep. To convey reality.

[Ben Collins]

Well, so my previous job, I used to cover conspiracy theories. And so I saw that Alex Jones had a guy on his show that said they're doing child sex trafficking on Mars. Like they're, they're bringing children up there to Mars. And I just did some quick math and I was like, by the time they get up there though, they're like 25 at least. Like they're, they're like, you know, I don't know what number you're getting at here, but like they're fully adults by the time they're up at Mars. So my editor was like, you should call NASA.

[Pablo Torre]

What was NASA's response when you fact checked the math?

[Ben Collins]

They thought I was just an idiot calling them and they're trying to be nice to me. And then they got so mad. Like once the story came out, they were like, I didn't know I was on the record. All this stuff was terrible and I did feel bad for them. But the, the headline was basically like, NASA colon, there is no child sex trafficking on Mars or something. Had Alex Jones stuck to this kind of, there's no problems. This is great, amazing content.

[Pablo Torre]

The thing that he ends up doing, though, is not just do 9, 11 conspiracy theories and Pizzagate.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

It gets to the subject that is at the heart of this entire saga that you've been immersed in.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Alex Jones]

It's a Sunday of sorrow for Newtown, Connecticut and for the nation. This afternoon, hundreds of residents walk the road to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where on Friday, 26 people were murdered. The majority of those who died today were children. Beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. Sandy Hook is a synthetic, completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. There's a cover up. There's actors, they're manipulating, They've been caught lying. What do you do when they've got the kids going in circles in and out of the building with their hands up? I've watched the footage and it looks like a drill.

[Pablo Torre]

How do you describe what we just heard there in terms of where it fits into his sort of oeuvre?

[Ben Collins]

It's a harassment campaign against private citizens who've gone through the worst thing that you can ever imagine.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Ben Collins]

You know, I've come to call it like the double whammy of American life. Really only happens here where one day you drop them off at school and then they no longer exist as human beings anymore. And then for the next few years of your life, there is an economy around trying to make it clear that your child never existed at all. And by the way, you deserve harassment because you're in on it.

[Pablo Torre]

Right? You're a crisis actor.

[Ben Collins]

You're a crisis actor. You're part of it. And, you know, a big part of this to me was always when I say the double whammy of American life. It's that Alex was part of that ecosystem and really kind of drove it. And what he did at that time was he told people to call the families, call the parents. There was a guy who went, who was an Alex Jones fan who like, ripped up the memorials and then called the families and were like, you know, why did you do this? For years, this is what happened to them after they had to. All these people had to move just to stay away from this harassment. And more importantly, he made so much goddamn money, dude. He made so much money.

[Pablo Torre]

No, the business of being a Sandy Hook truther.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Was one of the most telling chapters in human civilization. The thing that was least acceptable became one of the most monetizable. And there were no guardrails around this. And it reminds me, of course, in the bigger picture sense, of one of the greatest Onion headlines of all time. The recurring headline, which I'm sure you know by memory.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. Which is no way to prevent this, says, only a nation where this regularly happens.

[Pablo Torre]

And it's hard to come up with a better capsule summary than that. But this is where, like, the Onion being the antagonist to Infowars, to Alex Jones is perfect in this sort of, I don't know, like, the fake news spectrum. The moral valence of what it is to do satire and the abuse of satire. I mean, I grew up reading the paper. Which you have revived.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Like, I'm holding the new Onion in my hands and I'm seeing at the very top. This is the March April edition. Tearful Trump claims he was sex trafficked by Epstein. I was one of his victims. We was president. It's the stuff that made me laugh consistently.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

1998 drugs win drug war. 2011 judge rules white girl will be tried as black adult.

[Ben Collins]

Once the trial begins next week, all courtroom images of Hannah will depict her as a 300 pound muscular black man. And jury members will be instructed to imagine her as such. Great video, by the way.

[Pablo Torre]

So good. Leading us to 2014, Ohio replaces Lethal injection with humane new head ripping off machine.

[T-Mobile Advertiser / Commercial Voice]

The new device is designed to be as humane as possible, emitting soothing white noise and putting prisoners on a cushioned seat before its metallic talons dig into their necks and painlessly wrench their heads off.

[Pablo Torre]

And so the whole point in all of these things, not to be pedantic about satire, like in the humor in the sacred topic that you seem to be defiling.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

You're actually revealing something fundamentally interesting and useful about us in which the person being made fun of is not one of the most traumatized victims you can imagine. Yeah, but it's often incredibly powerful people in institutions.

[Ben Collins]

To me, it's the financialization of it. Anybody can believe stupid, but if you say believe my stupid, and the only way to stop that stupid is, is this boner pill I'm selling you on the Internet, and then suddenly you're a

[Alex Jones]

millionaire, My friends, we have done it. With Dr. Group's help, we have developed ultimate Male Vitality supplement with eight concentrated super herbs. This is the answer to the globalist war on male vitality.

[Ben Collins]

Like a multi, multi millionaire like you have, you have a recurring revenue of people buying your burner pills every month. That is not a speech issue. That is like an FTC issue. That's like. That's an issue of. Of do we want an economy that incentivizes that behavior? Right. And I just don't want to live in a world like. I just simply don't want to live

[Alex Jones]

in a world like that.

[Pablo Torre]

And so the story we're here to tell, it's basically been in the works for more than a year at this point.

[Ben Collins]

18 months.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay. Well, I think we should probably catch people up with the date November 14, 2024.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

This is nine days after Trump's reelection. And actually, good things seems to have happened.

[Ben Collins]

CNN breaking news.

[Alex Jones]

New this morning, the satirical news site the Onion has just won an auction to acquire the media outlet Infowars.

[T-Mobile Advertiser / Commercial Voice]

That is right. The Onion buys Alex Jones's Infowars in a bankruptcy auction.

[Ben Collins]

It sounded like a headline you would

[T-Mobile Advertiser / Commercial Voice]

read in a satirical newspaper, but this is no joke.

[Ben Collins]

The Onion plans to turn Infowars into a parody, mocking the kind of disinformation that Alex Jones amplified. The Onion buying Infowars is like if

[Alex Jones]

Mad magazine bought Mein Kampf.

[Pablo Torre]

It's hard to imagine something more perfect than you guys trolling the world's greatest troll by using legal mechanisms available to you that I did not know were even possible.

[Ben Collins]

We do big swings as a company, and this was clearly our biggest one yet. Also, it was a 50, 50 ball until we found out. So it was a. In terms of a swing, it was a home run swing. And we connected.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, this. This is the thing. So this news breaks.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And it's an enormous deal. Everyone's covering it, and then it doesn't happen.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

So the answer I'm here to find out is, like, what the. Did happen? And also in the. In the process of that, what happened to you?

[Ben Collins]

Medicine, antidepressants. That's what happened to me. Yeah, look, it was a, it's been a real test of my mettle as a human being and I think like our mettle as a country in the last 18 months. And those two stories sort of dovetail pretty nicely.

[Pablo Torre]

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[Pablo Torre]

So I just got to recap here because summer of 2022, Alex Jones and the parent company of Infowars, which is conveniently named Free Speech Systems, they had already been found liable for damages, like significant damages, because of three defamation lawsuits led by Sandy Hook parents. And just to set the scene here, there are lawsuits in Connecticut, there are lawsuits in Texas, where Alex Jones is based. And so these two sets of Sandy Hook families at these two different trial venues, they're bringing litigation stemming from, again, the mass killing of 20 students between six and seven years old, plus six of their educators, plus the shooter himself. This was all 13 and a half years ago in Newtown, Connecticut, Sandy Hook Elementary. But legally speaking, Alex Jones lost those cases.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Why?

[Ben Collins]

Because he didn't participate in the cases. He thought he was above it.

[Pablo Torre]

And you were covering the trial for NBC News?

[Ben Collins]

Yes, I was. Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

We love discovery. We love documentation on this show. How forthcoming is he with the documents that the court is demanding?

[Ben Collins]

Oh, he doesn't provide anything. Like, literally does not provide anything. But that also backfires, which I'm sure you're gonna talk about. There is, like, this one moment that is, it would be like if it happened on Law and Order, you'd be like, shut the up.

[Pablo Torre]

One of my favorite moments in the history of jurisprudence. We have Alex Jones on the witness stand. The judge in her black robe is over his shoulder, and he's on trial in Texas. And a lawyer for the Texas families is going to reveal something that is objectively amazing.

[Ben Collins]

Is that the phone number?

[Alex Jones]

Yes. So you did get my text messages and said you didn't. Nice trick.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Ben Collins]

Mr. Jones, indeed. You didn't give this text message to me. You don't know where this came from. Do you know where I got this?

[Alex Jones]

No.

[Ben Collins]

Mr. Jones, did you know that 12 days ago, 12 days ago, your attorneys messed up and sent me an entire digital copy of your entire cell phone with every text message you've sent for the past two years, and when informed, did not take any steps to identify it as privileged or protected in any way. And as of two days ago, it fell free and clear into my possession. And that is how I know you lied to me when you said you didn't have text messages about Samuel. Did you know that?

[Alex Jones]

I See. I told you the truth. This is your Perry Mason moment. I get gave them my phone, and then.

[Ben Collins]

Mr. Jones, you need to answer the question.

[Alex Jones]

No, I didn't know this happens, but, I mean, I told you I gave him a phone.

[Pablo Torre]

I just want to take a second to applaud the camera panning down to the back of his lawyer's head.

[Ben Collins]

Everybody, Everybody involved cooked.

[Pablo Torre]

It's. I, I. I don't even know how that's possible.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I don't either.

[Pablo Torre]

Like, I accidentally gave you the opposite of what I should have done. Whoops.

[Ben Collins]

He has gone through many legal trials and tribulations, and no one sought through to just embarrassing him at scale.

[Pablo Torre]

It also just has sort of like the vibe of, like, a kid who's finally been hauled in front of a principal.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And in this case, the principal is Texas District Court Judge Maya Gamble, who treats him like he is. Yeah, he's misbehaving in class.

[Alex Jones]

Split your gum out, Mr. Jones. It's not gum.

[Pablo Torre]

What is it? Because you're not allowed food or gum

[Ben Collins]

of any kind in the courtroom.

[Alex Jones]

I. I had my tooth pulled a week and a half ago, and it's. I had some gauze in there earlier, and it's. It's been causing me to have some pain, so.

[Ben Collins]

You're chewing on your gauze.

[Alex Jones]

Would you like me to show you?

[Ben Collins]

No, I just want you to answer my question.

[Alex Jones]

No, Mom, I was massaging. Hold my mouth with my tongue.

[Ben Collins]

Actually, right here. I don't want to see the inside of your mouth.

[Alex Jones]

Hold on. Don't go.

[Pablo Torre]

It's.

[Ben Collins]

It's like.

[Pablo Torre]

It's incredible.

[Ben Collins]

It's great.

[Pablo Torre]

And ultimately, like, on the stand in Texas, Alex Jones goes on to admit the thing that he has been seemingly loathe to admit finally, which is that. Oh, yeah, the whole Sandy Hook shooting, it was quite, quote, 100% real.

[Alex Jones]

Do you understand now that it was absolutely irresponsible of you? It was. Especially since I met the parents. And it's 100% real. As I saw the radio yesterday. And as I said here yesterday, it's 100% real. And the media still ran with lies that I was saying it wasn't real on air yesterday. It's incredible. They won't let me take it back. They just want to keep me in the position of being the Sandy Hook man my son got.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, just the experience of watching him try and save his reputation.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

As a reporter covering the trial at the time, what did it tell you about Alex Jones's capacity to actually handle the truth?

[Ben Collins]

Well, you have to, like, bring him to the limit. Right. Of him realizing, like, this might actually be it, that he might actually face consequences here. The issue is, though, every mass shooting since then, he has called a false flag. Almost every single one, you know, El Paso, Buffalo. His default statement is, these people who died in this horrific thing are not real, or they are real, but it's being done on behalf of, like, a government or something like that. And to say that this isn't a big deal. It's not a problem that we have in this country with gun violence.

[Pablo Torre]

So this jury awards the families $50 million. And that's not even, like, the big damages trial.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Fall 2022 in the state of Connecticut. You have the jury form in there. This is the other trial we've been talking about. And he's reading off the damages to plaintiffs.

[Ben Collins]

Total, fair, just, and reasonable damages to plaintiff Robert Parker and against Alex Jones and Free Speech Systems, line A and line B, total $120 million.

[Pablo Torre]

$120 million. $25 million, $55 million. And on and on and on. And, yeah, Alex Jones on his show is like. He's basically saying, yeah, they had me doing the Oprah thing.

[Alex Jones]

You get a million, you get 100 million, you get a 50 million.

[Pablo Torre]

But the total damages, it all adds up to about how much, Ben?

[Ben Collins]

$1.4 billion.

[Pablo Torre]

Which, as a historical matter, how do we even begin to contextualize what that is?

[Ben Collins]

Oh, it's. It's far and away the most in any defamation suit of all time. I want to make it clear. I do remember covering it that day. And he was, you know, almost elated. He literally said, oh, I'm never gonna pay this. It's like, I'm. I'm. You know, I'm never gonna pay this out. This is a guy who settled everything else he's ever done. He once was sued by Chobani, the yogurt company, for alleging that they brought tuberculosis into the United States through immigrants. They settled. Another guy who he falsely accused of doing the Charlottesville attack. Settled. People generally just take, you know, the. The admission of guilt, the admission that he's making stuff up, the on air apology in a paltry sum of money and walk away.

[Pablo Torre]

At the time that it was ruled that he owed these families $1.4 billion, how much was Alex Jones worth?

[Ben Collins]

Allegedly he was worth like, I believe, tens of millions of dollars, maybe hundreds of millions of do. But he, you know, he had this recurring stream of income like that, the thing, and it has not shut off. It's actually probably gotten bigger over time because he sells people. The solution to all of these conspiracy theories. Right. Iodized salt from a specific rock in a place is actually the thing that will save you from all of the radiation coming from 5G Earth. Like there's he. He provides you something to be extremely afraid of and an answer. And also, just like merch, his legal

[Pablo Torre]

response to this is an ancient American response. Because he does what?

[Ben Collins]

He files for bankruptcy. Yeah, because he has to. Right. He has a lot of money. Like, this guy is rich by any definition, but he's not $1.4 billion rich. Right. So he has to file for bankruptcy. And what gets folded into that bankruptcy is this thing called Free Speech Systems, which encompasses Infowars and Infowars Life, which is the supplement company, and several thousand domain names, including which. Which we learned after the fact when looking through bank.

[Pablo Torre]

Thousands of domain names.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. Including one called GoblinLove.net I'm just gonna

[Pablo Torre]

go over at GoblinLove.net right now and see what's happening on GoblinLove.net I'm getting the whole thing of, like this. It's not a secure connection and. Okay, very good. It's probably for the best.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I'm sure he had grand designs for Goblin.

[Pablo Torre]

I should say for the record here, that we at Pablator finds out are reaching out to attorneys for Alex Jones as well as for the parent company of Infowars. And while they may not immediately respond to our request for comment, we will post an update in the show notes and on social if they do. And in terms of like, bankruptcy strategy, the legal sort of dimension of that, I should be very clear that neither of us are bankruptcy lawyers.

[Ben Collins]

No.

[Pablo Torre]

And so while other sports podcasts have been talking about the final four, we ended up speaking to a guy named Chris Matty.

[Chris Matty]

Yeah, my name is Chris Matty. I'm a lawyer in Connecticut. I was lead counsel for the Sandy Hook families who Brought a case against Alex Jones and infowars here in Connecticut, lifelong Husky fan. Go Huskies.

[Pablo Torre]

And Chris Matty said that Alex Jones mocking the verdict struck him as just another theatrical performance of sorts, as opposed to, again, something true.

[Chris Matty]

What it struck me as was a guy who was play acting, that he was strong and unbothered by this verdict, when inside, I think he was terrified of what this would mean for him and his business. And my biggest hope was that the verdict might puncture, you know, this aura that he has around him with many of his followers. You know, where some people who had been misled for so long might have watched the trial, seen all the evidence, and then seen this jury's verdict and thought to themselves, you know, this was bull all along.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, in basketball, there's the concept of a heat check.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And it just felt like the Sandy Hook families finally exposed Alex Jones as the thing that he never wanted to be regarded as to his audience, which was just a bull.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I mean, that's what it felt like in the moment.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, what this lawyer, what this ucon Huskies apologist also told us, which

[Ben Collins]

is that, first of all, disgusting behavior.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, that's gross. That's gross. But the degree of public confidence that Alex Jones was sort of theatrically performing, according to Chris Matty, it was far from the only thing that he saw Alex Jones misrepresenting in this case.

[Chris Matty]

Throughout the case, we knew that Alex Jones was lying about his assets. I mean, that's one of the reasons that he ultimately was defaulted, is because he had his people fabricate financial documents and he was concealing, you know, crucial information about the way his business worked, which was obviously corrupt, like lie, and you get clicks. That was the basic profit model. So we expected, you know, to run into some, you know, malfeasance. Post verdict, he sought bankruptcy in a very friendly venue in Texas. And we were assigned to a court that, you know, basically allowed him to drag things out, continue to operate his business while benefiting from it. And the problem was that our families did not care about money. They've never cared about money. They rejected a deal with Alex Jones that would have paid them a lot of money and instead wanted to make sure that this verdict was used to basically defang him. And so the whole banker, again, that

[Pablo Torre]

the vampire thing keeps on coming back.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I mean, he shouldn't have used that word. What is he doing?

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, dare I say that the whole onion thing is a bit on the nose now, Pablo, that's garlic. Hold on. Yeah, I'm getting in my ear.

[Ben Collins]

That is garlic, mother. Do not edit that out.

[Pablo Torre]

Do not let him have that furiously googling vampire onion. We got to fast forward, though, to June 2024, because the families and the lawyer, Chris Maddie, represents them. They agreed to let the court supervise the liquidation of Alex Jones Inc. All of his assets. And the biggest asset in what is now, like, Storage Wars.

[Ben Collins]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

Is, of course, what.

[Ben Collins]

Oh, it's. It's Infowars.

[Pablo Torre]

So when did you and the Onion come up with the idea to make a bid on it?

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, so I saw it was for sale. Like, they. They have to market these things. They have to. In bankruptcy court. They have to go market it. And they. It appeared in, like, the equivalent of a classified ad somewhere in some Austin newspaper. And that was uploaded, I think, to, like, Blue sky or Twitter or something. I was like, this would be funny. The first thing I want to do is make sure the families would be okay with us doing a bit on this, because, like, you don't want to go in there and do a. A bit about stuff like this without people's, you know, permission, like, express permission. The other thing that. The big thing that play into our calculus is the money goes to the families. Like, if we buy this, it goes to the Sandy Hook families. And I was like, I'm not sure anybody else is going to bid on it. He might just get it back with money he's laundered through, like, Roger Stone or something, which would be unacceptable to most people. And it certainly looked like it was headed that way. So we were like, well, it's either us or nobody.

[Pablo Torre]

But when you say that you talked to the families and their reaction was like, huh?

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. I think it took him a minute. I think they were. At first, they were like, that thing.

[Pablo Torre]

It's worth characterizing, by the way, the reaction of Chris Matty, the lawyer for the families, because it was understandable.

[Chris Matty]

I think the families would have been very happy for somebody to come in and just shutter this thing. On the other hand, they also recognize that there's kind of real value in using a brand and a property to. That has been for so long used for terrible purposes and to kind of turn it around a little bit.

[Ben Collins]

I think a lot of people characterize victims of tragedies like this as, like, that's all they are. You know, they are. They. That's the dad of this dead child or something. They are human beings who like to laugh at stuff and have lives. And this allows them to, like, reclaim their identity in a way that is Very nice. Right. And also if you live in America, you almost certainly know someone who has been a victim of gun violence. And that's not all they are. Now the issue is nine days before the auction for this thing, it is now official.

[Pablo Torre]

CNN projects that Donald Trump has been elected president, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris and making a political comeback unlike any. Oh, right, remember that? November 2024, to put it in the grand timeline.

[Ben Collins]

So he wins and then there's this like eight day window where we're like, okay, we are walking into a burning building when we, we bid what we have. And what we have is $1.75 million in part because our business is doing well and in part because we have a, a sponsorship for our launch of it with Everytown, which is the, you know, the gun safety group. And then we have the backing of the families the families have helped out by, basically. So the Connecticut families don't really care about money very much. The Texas families care about it slightly. They have basically a deferred payments from the Connecticut families to the Texas families built into this thing, like a claims waiver kind of thing. What that allows that to do is like push the value of our bid up much higher. The federal receiver in charge of the estate for Infowars, he has a fiduciary duty to maximize value. Cash is king. And by maximizing value, we have the highest bid.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, Alex Jones, his shell company, First United American Companies, they had bid three and a half million and lost because you guys had bid the 1.75 plus. What I can only translate into sort of like non lawyer speak is like this sweetener.

[T-Mobile Advertiser / Commercial Voice]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Where the families agreed to forego some of the proceeds to benefit other creditors, which brought the sweetener to a value of like around $7 million correctively. But of course the response from Alex Jones as Infowars is going offline and again, he can't even broadcast from his famous studio.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. You would describe how he lost his mind.

[Alex Jones]

Ladies and gentlemen, it is 7:50 right now. I'm about to upload this to X. I just got word 15 minutes ago that my lawyers and folks met with the US trustee over our bankruptcy this morning and they said they're shutting us down even without a court order. This morning the Connecticut Democrats with the Onion newspaper bought us. They asked did they outbid? They said, well, it was competitive. So they changed all the bidding rules, made it secret. Two days ago I had a bad feeling. I told you that one of the

[Ben Collins]

very first things he does is he calls Steve Bannon on the air. And Steve Bannon picks up the phone and goes, what the is happening?

[Pablo Torre]

The Onion is the front group that

[Ben Collins]

bought it with backing from, from other sources.

[Alex Jones]

But the Onion is going to turn into a parody site, thinking they can mock us.

[Ben Collins]

They're going to, you know, make fake news.

[Alex Jones]

And the vitamin supplements that you sell, Alex and other people sell, they think

[Ben Collins]

they're going to be really funny.

[Alex Jones]

Let's show how funny it is.

[Ben Collins]

Walk in the control room, put the frickin camera up in their face and let's get a name, rank and serial number. Imperial troops going to come in there and think they're going to jackboot.

[Alex Jones]

What's going on?

[Ben Collins]

Let's see the jackboot.

[Alex Jones]

Let's see the polish on the jackboot.

[Ben Collins]

Let's see the heel of the jackboot. This is, they're nothing but Gestapo. And then the receiver goes in and starts like turning stuff off in the studio, which was also weird. And we didn't really fully understand the extent of how that was going to take place.

[Alex Jones]

They're turning off the Internet, turning everything off here. And so that's in process right now. Infowars is turned off, band video is turned off. And so there is a very good chance that we will be back here in the next few days as soon as the judge has an emergency hearing. And this will. This, what I believe is injustice and wrong will be upended.

[Ben Collins]

A thing that I didn't fully understand until midway through the day is that he had never heard of the Onion until it bought in force. He had just never didn't even like the concept of it was completely foreign to him. So we, that was a fun thing to deal with. And then over the course of the day, like, you know, the local, like the, like Fox News started because like it was so out of left field. The news didn't really know how to handle it. Fox News said we had 4.3 trillion daily readers, which is on our website somewhere, but I don't even know where. It's not even on like the about section. I don't know where they found that.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Ben Collins]

We had done a hostile takeover of the News for a day. And it was great, except this really, really made Alex very, very upset. So we realized that he was simply not going to give up on this thing.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. And spoiler alert, less than a month later, a judge rejects your winning bid, rejects the entire auction that took place. And Alex Jones takes to his microphone again.

[Alex Jones]

This is a fight all the way to the end. And I've told Trump and I'VE told his advisors they're the bad guys, and so I like our odds. Just taking the gloves off.

[Pablo Torre]

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[Pablo Torre]

Can you describe what it's like to face Alex Jones with the gloves off?

[Ben Collins]

Oh, it sucks, brother. It's not good. They had made a bunch of threats toward me and like the Onion in general over that month that they were going to come after us for, you know, thought crime, whatever. I don't know exactly what, what, for silencing him? For silen.

[Pablo Torre]

Taking his free speech?

[Ben Collins]

Yes, for taking his free speech. For basically enacting a judgment, several judgments against him by bidding on the company. And a lot of people ask me, like, you know, the judge, for example, was like, why wouldn't this sell for more? Why wouldn't this go for more?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I gotta admit, like, that's a pretty good price. Yeah, right?

[Ben Collins]

And it's because you're not buying Infowars. You're buying Alex Jones's personal harassment campaign. For the rest of your life. You are inheriting this thing. You're taking on all of this bull forever. Like, we were just talking about strength and how he views strength, how auctions

[Pablo Torre]

shirtless on a horse.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. And what I've realized over the last 18 months is strength is actually sticking through to what you believe in, what is the right thing to do for people who would otherwise just abandon it. It's not about showing up on a horse and taking big pills until your voice sounds like this download here. It's. That's not what it is. Or bombing the out of countries and yelling at people about it, or, you know, sending your mask goons into cities and beating the out of women and shooting in the face. That's not strength. That's actually like the opposite. That's insecurity. Strength is knowing that you're going to walk into a bunch of people saying insane about you and keep walking. I. I just think, Pablo, there is a moment in your life where you see a bunch of evil happening and you have a chance to stop something that is particularly egregious. And if you walk away from it, I just don't know why you're alive, you know, And I decided with the help of everybody in my life and family, that, like, I just wasn't gonna drop this and I just didn't want to make it. So our. Our most grievous sin as a country, which is our. Which is mass shootings of kids in school, where financializing that and getting away with it is fine. If we can't draw a line There. Then there is no line anymore. You can just do whatever you want, evil. Whatever evil you want, and make as much money you want. Friends of mine were like, wasn't it cool that time you like, you know, you hipjacked Alex Jones? And like. And I was like. I was like, no, dude, we're still going for it. And they'd be like, yeah, that's cute, Ben. It's nice that you're doing that. Everyone had just given up on the premise and I. I wasn't gonna give up on these families. I just didn't wanna do it.

[Pablo Torre]

Except the problem was that bankruptcy court doesn't exactly make doing the right thing easy. And I will spare you the full TikTok of what happened here, but all you really gotta know is that shutting up Alex Jones for good because of Sandy Hook ultimately hinged on a legal character known as the court appointment appointed receiver. And the court appointed receiver's job was to sell at auction a whole bunch of stuff belonging to a bankrupt Alex Jones. Kind of like, you know, Storage Wars. He has the actual passwords?

[Ben Collins]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

To infowars.com. he's also the guy, relatedly, who sued Alex Jones in June of 2025 for things which included allegedly selling part of his ranch to his dad for $10.

[Alex Jones]

Yep.

[Pablo Torre]

Gifting his dad three luxury cars and then apparently forgetting which cars they even were also making up a prenuptial agreement payment to his wife and other, quote, sham transactions concocted to frustrate the collection efforts. End quote. And this is the dude who, in so many words, seemed like he was all good with the Onion and your bit.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And then what happened?

[Ben Collins]

I think he got spooked.

[Pablo Torre]

As did the gum hating judge that we mentioned before who rejected the Onion's winning bid back in late 2024, only to have something of a change of heart in August of last year.

[Alex Jones]

I guess it's hit the news. The Hill judge clears the way for the Onion to revive bid for Alex Jones Infowars. So here we go again.

[Pablo Torre]

But. But more than anything else, Ben Collins needed the court appointed receiver to rule in his favor. Or at least allow the Onion to lease the keys to infowars for that 75 grand a month. And what that receiver realized, apparently, is that he did not want Alex Jones to do to him what he had done to all of his targets, including the Sandy Hook families who are still struggling to collect those $1.4 billion in damages. He realized that Alex Jones was gonna talk about him all the time on Infowars. And make his life hell. In fact, Alex Jones was so committed to information warfare and to fighting that $1.4 billion judgment that he tried to take his case all the way to the supreme court, filing an 84 page application, which ultimately failed.

[Ben Collins]

First of all, he called the Onion his ideological enemy and that we shouldn't be allowed to take over because of that, which I don't think is how courts work. But I just, you know, that's just, that's just me.

[Pablo Torre]

But around that same time last September, something remarkable happened. Donald Trump's Department of Justice entered the fray. The director of Trump's weaponization working group, a guy named Eagle, Ed Martin, who is also the Associate Deputy Attorney General and the United States pardon attorney, as previously discussed on this show, sent a threatening letter to Chris Matty, the UConn fan and attorney for the Sandy Hook families. And in that letter, Martin questions the credibility and financial motives of one of the first responders at the shooting, an FBI agent. And he says, quote, as you may know, there are criminal laws protecting the citizens from actions by government employees who may be acting for personal benefit. I encourage you to review those. End quote.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, it's like active Sandy Oak trutherism coming from the letterhead of the United States government.

[Pablo Torre]

Alex Jones naturally obtained and then published this letter on infowars.com and he tweeted it out alongside a photo of himself standing next to a smiling Ed Martin.

[Alex Jones]

So yesterday I talked to Ed Martin, the head strike force lawyer with billions of dollars under him and thousands of people at his disposal. And we talked about 45 minutes, and most of what he told me he said was, you know, should be on the record. Only a few things weren't. And a lot of this was exclusive information because I've known ed for really 24, 25 years, a little about his background, and he's been like, hardcore anti globalist for 40 years. I mean, he's been doing it longer than I have.

[Pablo Torre]

But what this whole multimedia effort told the recipient, Chris Matty, was something else about Alex Jones.

[Chris Matty]

He was getting very, very worried that he was getting to the end. He was trying to come up with some way to, you know, throw off the process that is going to result in the closure of infowars. And he tells Ed Martin, hey, and by the way, I don't have firsthand knowledge of this, but it's pretty easy to read these tea leaves that, you know, one thing we might be able to do here is to suggest that, you know, this whole litigation is somehow under investigation by the Justice Department. Thankfully, somebody at the Justice Department, I believe Todd Blanch shut it down. But it is, it is a. One thing that it made me think about is how many people have gotten letters like this who don't have counsel, who haven't done anything wrong. And are the justice with the Justice Department just being used as a form of, like, bush league intimidation, which is what this kind of was.

[Pablo Torre]

Todd Blanche, by the way, the new acting Attorney General seemed to have, at the very least, the political wherewithal to think to himself, maybe we shouldn't want to be head to head against the Sandy Hook families by accusing the FBI agent who is trying to, you know, help them.

[Ben Collins]

And this is the Ghislaine Maxwell guy, by the way.

[Pablo Torre]

Again, it's like, where is the line? Is the story of our time? What's gonna be the point beyond which you cannot return? And they looked right over into that canyon and then drew themselves back at the last second. Yeah.

[Ben Collins]

And I think part of why I've been living with, you know, this like, feeling like I'm falling out of an airplane for 18 months is I am with them at the canyon. And this was the last line of defense. We had to do it because literally no one else was going to do it. The good news is two things happened. One, the newspaper, like, went bananas in this timeframe. So we relaunched it in August of 2024. Since then, we'd become, I believe we are, the fifth largest newspaper in the United States right now, which is insane. We have over 70,000 subscribers. So that was just cooking as this was happening. So that was really helpful. And also it gave us some time to figure out what to do with this asset. Right. Because initially we were going to put some of our favorite old onion writers in charge of it and just do a bunch of scams like, send us a hundred dollars and we'll send your grandson $20. That was the kind of thing that we were going to put on the front page, which I think we still might do, by the way. And then we're like, well, is that really doing this justice? Could we do something much bigger and better? So the good news is, over the last 18 months, and the bad news for Alex and everybody else involved in the other side is it gave us a lot of time to think about what this could be and make some phone calls. And then a couple weeks ago, Alex Jones shows up on Tim Pool's show, and they say that he smells like alcohol. And he says they're shutting down infowars next month.

[Alex Jones]

I'm ready but don't follow me at real life shows on x infowars.com we're getting. We're getting shut down. We have. We beat so many attacks, and. But finally, we're shutting down at the middle of next month.

[Ben Collins]

Wow.

[Alex Jones]

Insane. What happens. People can, you know. Yeah. So this is the fake auctions. All of it.

[Ben Collins]

Right now, the picture of sobriety.

[Pablo Torre]

I was gonna say I don't have blood tests, but I can smell him from here.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. So I called my lawyer, our bankruptcy lawyer, who we've had this whole time, and I was like, I know he says this, like, once a month, but again, he says that they're shutting down afterwards next month. So what's the deal? So he. He called the receiver and he was like, yeah, we're shutting it down. Like, the receiver said, we don't have enough money to pay rent on this $75,000. Right, exactly. Let alone pay for utilities and Internet and the staff, so we can't keep the asset moving. And we were like, well, this receiver has two responsibilities. Right. Do what the families want with this asset. That's one which currently they want to sell it to, hopefully us. I'm hope. I'm hoping. But, like, they want to sell it for. For value to someone they can trust is not in Alex Jones's orbit. And in order to do that, they have to keep the value of the asset up. That's. That is the receiver's job is to keep the value of the asset going. That's why he's still in the air.

[Pablo Torre]

The rub is, yeah, you can. You can sell this to Alex Jones's ideological enemy, but they got to figure out a way to make money with it.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, exactly. So we called the receiver and said, well, it has considerably less value to us as a dead property. We'll pay to take it over. And I can almost guarantee you, with the plans that we have, like, it will increase its value over, you know, the boner pill company that it currently runs. And by the way, and you know, this is not part of the deal, but the whole time, we're giving a cut of merch sales to the families. Like, we want. We want them to be able to get paid for real at some point with actual human dollars as part of this process. So we've come to an agreement with the receiver that we get to take over this asset pretty much immediately in a couple of days.

[Pablo Torre]

Wow.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Wait, so just to be clear, then, the. The actual big exclusive announcement here is that the Onion has finally acquired infowars.

[Ben Collins]

Yes. Yes. We have. We've taken over the Infowars studio and the IP and the website and all that stuff.

[Alex Jones]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

You guys hiring?

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. So part of the thing we did in the background is like, we're like, no matter if we get this thing or not, we need to go after this kind of like, you know, ecosystem of, like, slop fluencers. So we started hiring in the background. And the very first person we hired is a guy who reached out maybe like 20 minutes after the first announcement. And that's Tim Heidecker from Tim and Eric and Adult Swim days and office hours. And he's currently on tour.

[Pablo Torre]

That's incredible.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, he's an incredible fit. And we didn't know this until one phone call, but he does a great Al shown suppression.

[Alex Jones]

I set up a website and you can look at it right now because I've got a liquidate and I've got a lot of DVDs, and these are. These are items that I've had for 20 years. These are great DVDs. Entire Monty Python Flying Circus. Okay, now that's seven DVDs, and you can get that for 99 right now. And that's going to help pay for our legal bills. We're going to be able to keep the doors open here.

[Ben Collins]

A big part of what we've seen over the last couple of years is all the good comedians that you, you and I know and love, all the good pipelines for good comedy writers kind of got killed by a series of things like the writer strike, the fires, the pandemic. And by the time they all came back, like, all their jobs were replaced by, like, shows about oil with, like, they have like five racial slurs in them for some reason. And they're like, like, where's. Where is the apex mountain for what a comedy job is? And it's kind of.

[Pablo Torre]

Are you saying. Are you saying you're not hiring Jerry Jones to do a cameo?

[Ben Collins]

He is involved, but sometimes his yacht doesn't get great Wi fi. So that's kind of the issue.

[Pablo Torre]

But I just love. Hold on. But. But what you're saying is that you have. You have made a series of bets.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

On print, newspapers and now. Yeah. Comedy at the time, at which both of these industries have of course, been otherwise deeply, deeply destroyed. Yeah, I like.

[Ben Collins]

I like a. I like a zag. We also had this woman named Mia De Pasquale who was in charge at, you know, Nathan, for you.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Collins]

She was in charge of duping all those companies into participating in that show. And all of them have deep Rolodexes. My favorite thing about Tim is that he just loves bringing up younger comics and giving them more space to do stuff. And we're going to give them space and we're going to give them the ability to grow into a much bigger thing in what better way, right? Like build on the rubble of all this awful stuff. We're all going to have to do this, brother. Like we have, like there, there is just rubble now. And for example, what you've built is like you built this mansion on top of this rubble because you correctly identified it as rubble. We're trying to do the same. And the people we've hired for this, I could not possibly be more confident. It's going to be a big deal.

[Pablo Torre]

Which is all to say that at some point you, Ben Collins, head of the Onion, CEO of Global Tetrahedron, is going to get the keys to that studio and you're gonna, you're gonna get to walk in to Alex Jones's headquarters and do whatever you want with it.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, and these families too. You know, if I'm hoping we get access to the actual facility and it's not like booby trapped or whatever, but like they can go in there whenever they want and, you know, put their feet up if they want. And that, that is important to me and hopefully to them that they get to be able to do that and feel like, you know, what happened to them won't happen to anybody else.

[Pablo Torre]

Ben Collins, thank you for coming on the show. And if I find that there is a Filipino looking sports podcaster on your new podcast network, I will sue your ass.

[Ben Collins]

Well, look, first of all, even our fake version of you will understand that vampires don't like garlic and onions. I swear to God, you guys, every part.

[Pablo Torre]

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.

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[Pablo Torre]

Hi there.

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[Pablo Torre]

Nah, I'm just kidding.

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[Pablo Torre]

Sid for short. For summer I'm in the mood for comfortable. What am I wearing? Where am I going? What's the vibe? The short answer? American Eagle shorts. They're cute and go with everything. They just work. It's Sid for short. An American Eagle for summer. Shop my pics now@ae dot.