The Onion’s Latest Joke: Taking Over Infowars

Summary

The Daily – The Onion’s Latest Joke: Taking Over Infowars

Date: July 7, 2026
Host: Rachel Abrams (The New York Times)
Guests: Ben Collins (CEO, The Onion), Tim Heidecker (Comedian, Parody Host for Infowars 2.0)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Rachel Abrams explores the surreal, satirical, and deeply consequential story of The Onion's acquisition of Infowars, the notorious misinformation site founded by Alex Jones. The discussion centers on how this unlikely takeover came to be, what The Onion intends to do with Jones' toxic brand, the ethical and emotional complexities involved, and the broader state of comedy and satire in today's highly polarized media and political landscape.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background: The Fall of Alex Jones and the Auction of Infowars

• Infowars’ Downfall: After losing two major defamation lawsuits for spreading lies about the Sandy Hook shooting, Alex Jones was ordered to pay over $1.4 billion to Sandy Hook families. Unable to pay, his assets—including Infowars—were auctioned to help meet the judgment.

  • "[Jones] perpetrated for years the lie that this shooting was a hoax... After losing two defamation cases, Jones was ordered to pay more than a billion dollars..." (01:01–01:24)

• The Onion's Bid: In a surprise twist, The Onion bid for and won the bankruptcy auction, pledging to remake Infowars into a parody site and funnel proceeds to Sandy Hook families.

  • "The Onion, the satirical news outlet, has won a bankruptcy auction to take control of Infowars..." (01:44–02:03)

2. Inside the Takeover: Motivation & Process

• Personal Stakes & Motivation:
  • Ben Collins describes his journey from reporting on online misinformation to covering Jones’ trial and feeling compelled to counteract Jones' legacy.
    • "When you googled my friend’s name, the thing that would come up was that he wasn’t real... Internet had just started to show the cracks of where we were headed." (03:52–04:45)
  • Both Collins and Heidecker emphasize their desire to counteract years of damage by turning Infowars into satire.
  • Collins notes the strategic decision: they could spend millions on advertising or spend the same amount to "do this really good thing."
    • "We could spend $2 million on Facebook ads...or we can do this really good thing and hope people come along for the ride." (07:17)
  • The acquisition was not without risk, as Jones retaliated, targeting them personally.
    • "It's been very scary, and we've had the dogs called on us from him and all of his weird, psycho..." (07:45)
    • Heidecker: "He basically thought that we were some kind of literal demons from hell." (07:54–08:16)

3. Reaction from Sandy Hook Families

• Complex Emotions and Support:
  • Initial awkwardness: Families were wary, but after understanding the vision, they supported the project.
    • "The first call was weird...they came back and they were like, now that I thought about it, I see the vision, you know?" (09:50)
  • Emotional resonance: A recent meeting left Onion staff and families in tears, with families expressing gratitude for the endeavor.
    • "It was weird to go into a thing where we thought we were gonna say thank you... And they were like, no, no, no. Thank you for doing this." (10:41–11:00)

4. Countering Jones’s Influence & The Infowars Legacy

• The Jones Ecosystem Today:

  • Though the original Infowars is diminished, Alex Jones continues on alternative platforms, though with much smaller audiences (around 6,000 per stream).
    • "It has like 6,000 views per stream... It's small. It's a small audience." (11:54–11:58)
  • The discussion acknowledges that Jones-style misinformation can resurge if not actively countered.

• Targeting the 'Supplement Grift':

  • Both explain that much of Jones’ operation was built around selling pseudoscientific products, using fear as a marketing ploy.
    • "A nuclear war is imminent, therefore buy my iodine." (12:21–12:24)
    • "I think that's the difference...once you start selling products as a direct response, immediately after a mass shooting and start demeaning the people who are victims"… (12:45–13:01)

5. How Satire Fits In: The Onion’s Ethos & Approach

• Why Infowars?:
  • The Onion’s tradition is to lampoon the dominant media form of the day—"the way people actually get their information."
    • "The Onion...has always been the best at going after the dominant mode of media at the time…" (13:20)
  • Their goal: Expose and ridicule the machinery of misinformation.
  • The absurdity of modern information wars makes the Infowars format perfect for lampooning.

6. Comedy Amidst Chaos: Satire in the Trump Era and Beyond

• Comedy’s Function in Turbulent Times:

  • Heidecker notes the opportunity for comedians is greater, not lesser, in chaotic political moments:
    • "I'm not trying to just go like, haha, look at Trump's orange complexion... I want to get into what is it about being a human being that gets you to the place where you're doing that to yourself. And I want to try to do that in a entertaining or funny way." (16:03)

• Responding to Accusations of Ideological Bias:

  • Collins and Heidecker stress that while their work may appear left-leaning, The Onion targets anyone wielding power irresponsibly—including Democrats.
    • Collins: "The most recent takedown request we got from a politician was from a very prominent Democrat...they think that we SANK Joe Biden's 2024 campaign." (18:31)
    • Heidecker: "We really do hammer all sides." (18:32)
  • The new Infowars parody won’t just target right-wing figures: "We're making fun of food influencers... We'll be making fun of people that certainly voted for, you know, Mamdani in New York..." (17:40)

7. The Impact and Mission Going Forward

• Redefining Infowars:

  • The goal is to rebrand Infowars as a platform for quality, independent satire and to "retrain people's brains" to think of it as fundamentally different from Jones' legacy.
    • Heidecker: "What we hope to have accomplished in...five years is we've retrained people's brains to think of Infowars meaning something fundamentally different." (19:06)
  • Collins praises the original Infowars branding and catchphrase—"there's a war on for your mind"—as a powerful frame, hijacked now for humor and critical commentary.
    • "Everything about Infowars was horrible except the branding and the catchphrase...There's a war on for your mind. Which is just a perfect sentence." (19:44)

• Comedy as Survival and Catharsis:

  • Heidecker reflects on the role of satire in enduring and processing darkness in the world:
    • "...it's just like making you feel like all this crazy shit is hanging over our heads, but we shouldn't be afraid of it all the time." (21:27)
  • The team aims to provide relief and context for a public overwhelmed by misinformation and doom.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Ben Collins:
  • "I can't imagine other people had the gumption...to take on Alex Jones’s harassment campaign. So I was like, okay, you know, I'm a man. My word, we're going to go through this." (05:20)
  • "They haven't received a penny from this guy. And it's been four-and-a-half years since the judgment, and ten years since they sued him. So they need this cash, and we would love to get them some." (08:39)
  • "Everything about Infowars was horrible except the branding and the catchphrase they came up with. And their catchphrase is, there's a war on for your mind. Which is just a perfect sentence." (19:44)
• Tim Heidecker:
  • "He took it all out of context and basically thought that we were some kind of literal demons from hell." (07:54)
  • "What we hope to have accomplished in...five years is we've retrained people's brains to think of Infowars meaning something fundamentally different and separate it from that ghoul [Alex Jones]." (19:06)
  • "It is a way to...survive the chaos of the world on a very deep level...it does a service to make [audiences] feel like, okay, this is something that happens and we have to laugh about it." (20:34)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:37–02:23: Overview—How and why The Onion took over Infowars.
• 03:24–04:45: Ben Collins’ personal story and motivation.
• 06:53–07:54: Retaliation from Alex Jones and the personal risks taken.
• 09:43–11:00: The emotional and supportive reaction of Sandy Hook families.
• 11:26–13:01: Strategies to counter Jones' ongoing influence and the Infowars business model.
• 13:20–14:14: How Infowars fits into The Onion’s approach to media satire.
• 16:03–16:56: Heidecker on the opportunities for comedy in the Trump era.
• 18:31–18:47: The Onion pushing back against accusations of partisan bias.
• 19:06–20:34: Vision for the future of Infowars under The Onion’s stewardship.
• 20:34–21:27: The deeper role of satire and comedy as catharsis.

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Tone & Style

The tone of the conversation is sharp, witty, and earnest—blending dark humor with deep empathy, especially when discussing the human toll of misinformation and the power of satire to both heal and critique.

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Summary

This episode of The Daily offers an incisive, at times surreal, but ultimately hopeful look at how satire can reclaim and repurpose the most toxic brands of the digital age. By leveraging the reach and irreverence of The Onion, Collins and Heidecker hope to neuter the legacy of Alex Jones, support Sandy Hook families, and reassert the importance of independent, critical comedy in an era of weaponized misinformation.

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For listeners who missed the episode, this summary covers the key moments, major themes, and memorable exchanges, serving as both a chronicle of a bizarre media twist and an exploration of comedy's role in confronting darkness.

Transcript

[A]

This is Maurice Shama, the host of a new podcast from Cyril Productions, the Marshall Project, and the New York Times. Last year, I spent three months embedded with a Capitol defense team. Their client had been on death row for more than 30 years, and now his execution date had been set. I followed along as the lawyers tried to prove something nobody had successfully done in three decades, that one of Texas most notorious serial killers was actually innocent. The last 12 weeks. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts

[B]

from. The New York Times. I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily.

[A]

This is not a Joke. The satirical outlet, the Onion is set to take over Infowars, the site that is run by notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

[C]

Yes, you heard that correctly.

[B]

Last Thursday, the Onion launched its own version of Infowars, the infamous online hub of misinformation created by Alex Jones. The takeover has been years in the making.

[C]

American conspiracy theorist and Internet broadcaster Alex Jones has been ordered to pay Sandy Hook families more than $1.5 billion because

[B]

he perpetrated for years the lie that this shooting was a hoax, that the people were actors. After losing two defamation cases, Jones was ordered to pay more than a billion dollars to the families affected by the Sandy Hook school shooting.

[D]

Breaking news tonight, Alex Jones has just moved to liquidate his personal assets to pay the families victims of the Sandy Hook massacre.

[B]

Unable to pay Jones, assets, including Infowars, were put up for auction.

[C]

He's no longer going to own Infowars, which is this conspiracy empire he's really used to poison the public discourse.

[B]

And then, in a surprise twist, the Onion, the satirical news outlet, has won a bankruptcy auction to take control of Infowars. The Onion stepped in. They announced plans to convert Infowars into a parody of itself and and committed to sharing proceeds from the new venture with the Sandy Hook families.

[D]

Hi, everybody.

[E]

It's Tim Heidecker here. I'm broadcasting now live. Thank you for joining me. We have major, major announcements to go through here.

[B]

Now, after nearly two years, the Onion's parody of Infowars is live.

[E]

Make no mistake, we will be the new Infowars.

[B]

Today we speak with Onion CEO Ben Collins and comedian Tim Heidegger about what they plan to do with Infowars and why they fought so hard to take control of it. It's Tuesday, July 7th. Hi, Ben.

[C]

Hey, how's it going?

[B]

I'm Rachel Abrams.

[C]

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too.

[B]

Thanks for being here.

[C]

Thanks for doing this at all.

[B]

Yes, I'm early. Last week, I sat down with Ben Collins, the CEO of the Onion.

[E]

I got to practice my daily. Hmm.

[B]

And actor and comedian Tim Heidecker. Tim, am I allowed to ask you to just give me your Alex Jones impression?

[E]

Yeah, I'm like a trained seal now. We knew that was the case, and frankly, that's what.

[D]

That's why we're.

[E]

That's why we're talking about it, you know?

[B]

Collins and Heidecker were preparing for the Onion's imminent relaunch of Infowars. The Onion has been around for almost 40 years and became infamous for skewering everything from American politics to pop culture.

[C]

In a lot of cases, people need catharsis. Just, like, give people a. Oh, you're not nuts. This feeling of, like, you're just not insane. The shit that's going on is insane, but you're not nuts.

[B]

Collins, who became CEO in 2024 after a decade as a reporter, has revitalized the Onion in a short amount of time.

[C]

And we've leaned into that as hard as we can. It's why we're the, I think, fifth biggest newspaper in the United States now.

[B]

I started my conversation with Ben and Tim by asking why they decided to remake Infowars.

[C]

You know, I used to be a reporter, and I was covering stupid stuff on the Internet when I was a little wee baby reporter guy at the Daily Beast. Now, 11 years ago, and my friend's girlfriend was shot and killed on live tv, on Facebook, actually, she was the first person killed by a guy wearing a GoPro. It was brutal. It was just really bad. And then, like, when you Googled my friend's name, the thing that would come up was that he wasn't real or didn't exist. And all this stuff. Like, there was. The Internet had just started to show the cracks of where we were headed. So I started covering that for a living. You know, I wound up covering Alex Jones's trial on NBC News. And I remember sitting there when the judgment came down, it became clear that he was gonna have to owe these people a billion dollars. And he said, I'm not paying any of this. You guys know you're not gonna receive a penny of this. And I was like, hey, dude, I think you gotta pay money.

[E]

Even after I got this gig, I didn't quite know about all the details, and there's a great documentary about it, the Truth Versus Alex Jones. And I sat there, watched that, and just my blood boiled. I couldn't believe what he had subjected those poor people to, which we know,

[B]

of course, he not only accused the Sandy Hook shooting of being faked he accused the parents of being actors. His listeners harassed them. Some of them had to move. Alex Jones, as we know, was ordered to pay more than $1.4 billion in damages. His assets go to bankruptcy because he does not have that money. Can you just, Ben, tell us what happens after that vis a vis your interest in the Onion?

[C]

Sure. We saw it was for sale, Infowars on, like, blue sky. There was. Somebody had clipped out a newspaper ad because you have to advertise a bankruptcy auction, which sounds weird, but it said, like, you know, get Alex Jones's armored truck or whatever. So I started making some phone calls, and I was like, does this mean Infowars is for sale? And they were like, yeah, it does. You get the IP if you want to. And I just tried to figure out what to do because I had obviously never purchased something at a bankruptcy auction, so I had to, like, learn some stuff. And we're like, okay, well, we can look at this, and I think we can pull this off. So we get excited to bid on this thing. And the bidding is on, I think, November 14th of 2024. And what happens on November 5th of 2024 is Donald Trump is elected President, United States. So people are wondering, like, should we do this as a safe thing to do? Dan Bongino, who became the deputy director of the FBI, got his start in Air Force. There were so many people tied up in those worlds, so people were spooked, and we just had to make a decision. And I just realized that I can't imagine other people had the gumption or just, like, time in their lives to take on Alex Jones's harassment campaign. So I was like, okay, you know, I'm a man. My word, we're going to go through this. And we put down her bid, and. And then we won. And then Alex absolutely lost his mind. I remember him calling Steve Bannon on air and being like, Steve Bannon being like, what the is going on? Like, on the phone, on Air, on E4AS. It was like he was panicking. The funniest part is he had never heard of the Onion until we bought it.

[B]

You're kidding. He said that?

[C]

Well, you could tell, like, he was like, the. This newspaper, the Onion, and he just never heard of it.

[B]

Just to clarify here. So basically, the point of the bankruptcy is that whatever gets sold, everything's supposed to go to the families that got that judgment right. So at this point, when you were trying to purchase his assets, his company was the idea to take it over and give money to the families in Some way.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

That was the immediate argument. When I presented to my team, I was like, you know, we could spend $2 million on Facebook ads and make $2.1 million in Onion merch or something, or we can do this really good thing and hope people come along for the ride. And that's what we decided to do. And we. Look, we. I have no idea if I would do it again, but I think I would because it's been this gigantic pain in the ass in my life, and it's been very scary, and we've had the dogs called on us from him and all of his weird, psycho.

[B]

Alex Jones has come after both of you personally, I believe. Oh, yeah.

[C]

Oh.

[E]

In the best possible way. I mean, I find it incredibly amusing for the most part.

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

Because he's discovered my body of work. Like you said, he didn't know the Onion. And then he found Tim and Eric's stuff from 15 years ago. And, you know, if you haven't seen some of that, it is pretty out there. It's pretty weird. But it's all coming from a place of absurdity and a place of silliness. But he took it all out of context and basically thought that we were some kind of literal demons from hell.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So you make a bid for the Onion, it goes through some legal wrangling in the courts. Now you have, I believe, celebrated the takeover. I know that you guys are treating it like a fait accompli you're about to launch, but what is the current status? Just to be clear, like, you have not officially taken over in the sense that, like, you can't go into Alex Jones's studio right now in Austin and, like, start broadcasting from there.

[C]

Yeah. So last August, there was an emergency. Stay put in place where it says, like, the receiver cannot sell these assets until we rule on this. The receiver is the guy in charge of dispensing all of these assets. And then Alex Jones said that he was going to shut everything down. Alex Jones's goal, by the way, is to render these assets valueless so he can buy them back for pennies. I don't accept that, because that means these families will never get anything. So we went to this receiver and we said, we'll lease all of this stuff from you. I know you can't sell it, but it doesn't say anything about this. And the receiver's like, yeah, I guess that's a good point. My goal is to keep the value of the assets up and make the families happy. And so we're moving this forward. And part of why we're trying to do this is to keep the value of this asset alive. By making fun of this thing. We were reminding people, like, hey, it has value to people on the planet Earth and it has value to us. And, you know, we would love to take this over and give these families. They haven't received a penny from this guy. And it's been four and a half years since the judgment in 10 years since they sued him. So they need this cash, and we would love to get them some.

[B]

How did the families react when you first told them that you wanted to take this horrific tragedy and make it into a comedy website?

[C]

The first call was weird because I was like, I work at the Onion. I used to cover this stuff. So a couple of these families knew who I was, and they were like, let me think about it. And then they came back and they were like, now that I thought about it, I see the vision, you know? Cause their goal has always been, you know, make it so he can't do this to any other family ever again. This, like, double whammy of American life that is you just lost your kids in a tragedy, and now I'm going to tell everybody they never really lived or they're. They're still alive and they graduated from high school. That's the thing that these people say now. And I. The strength of these families is absurd. Like, you've met these people. They are the strongest people I think I've ever met my entire life. And then we had this, like, really beautiful phone call with them maybe a month ago, where the two of you. It was us and the Onion writing staff.

[E]

Yeah, everybody.

[C]

Yeah. And then I think, like, six or seven of the families and, I don't know, a bunch of people left overtly crying in the office. It was weird to go into a thing where we thought we were gonna say, thank you for letting us do this. And they were like, no, no, no, no. I don't think you understand. Thank you for doing this.

[B]

But I wanna go back to this idea that one of the reasons the family supported you and one of your goals is to neuter Alex Jones. Because Alex Jones, he might not have Infowars, but he is running on the platform rumble. He is doing his thing. He still has people that are watching him. It is nowhere near the millions of people he had on YouTube before he was kicked off of YouTube, but nevertheless, he is starting to do the same thing he's done before. Right. And we don't know how big he's gonna Be. So I just sort of wonder like if he's already out there, like still doing his thing.

[D]

Like what.

[B]

How will you determine whether this effort is successful?

[E]

That's a good question. I mean, I tuned in the other day just because I hadn't done the impression in a while and I wanted to listen to his voice and I literally opened it up and he was talking about Charlie Kirk faking his own death. I was like, right. And we're doing a little bit of a similar take on that, on our parody of it. I mean, he is extremely diminished from where he was six years ago, ten years ago.

[C]

It has like 6,000 views per stream. Like this is not.

[B]

It's small.

[C]

It's small. It's a small audience. And I agree with you that he can build it back up. But that's America.

[E]

We should also note that the core of Alex Jones is a pills selling machine. It is.

[B]

Well, just to be really clear about what you mean here is that he has a part of his business where he sells products to people. And in some cases those products are to solve issues that he brings up on his show that might not be actual evidence based issues.

[E]

A nuclear war is imminent, therefore buy my iodine.

[B]

Stuff like that.

[A]

Right?

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

I also just have to point out. Did you guys see, I think it was New York magazine, but I can't remember. Somebody years ago did a quiz. Is this product from Alex Jones or is this product from Gwyneth Paltrow?

[E]

Right, sure.

[B]

And it was very hard to tell the difference. You don't want to make it seem like it's singular to Alex Jones.

[E]

No, no. But I mean, she's not advocating for the harassment of parents.

[C]

I think that's the difference is you can do whatever you want to sell products. Once you start selling products as a direct response immediately after a mass shooting and start demeaning the people who are victims of that mass shooting. That's to me, I don't know if I'm crazy here is a step too far.

[B]

The two of you have done a very good job of articulating. I think what you think the core of Alex Jones's product empire and also website is you've also explained a lot about the Onion and what sort of makes the Onion the Onion. Can you help me understand how does infowars fit into the core DNA of the Onion?

[C]

So the Onion, in my opinion, has always been the best at going after the dominant mode of media at the time. We always go after the way people actually get their information. And this was a You know, a shot across the bow. It's a little bit bigger than what we usually do in the sense that we're directly going after the information war. People who are trying to make you feel bad about everything you do so you can buy a supplement, but that's how everything operates. You see like, you know, rfk, who is carrying around sauerkraut and talking about peptides and all these other things, like the current du jour addiction of people who subscribe to things on the Internet. So like, to me, it was an obvious opportunity to take this model that was event like really not invented but perfected by Alex Jones and say, let's just lay it all bare.

[B]

After the break, we talk about what it is like to make comedy in this political environment. We'll be right back.

[D]

I'm Dani Blum, a journalist at the New York Times. I spend a lot of my time reporting on GLP1 medications. People call them weight loss drugs. They are doing so much more in the body and there's a lot of hope pinned on them. I am spending part of truly every single workday making sure that I am up to date on the latest science. I really want to make sure that I am talking to the leading researchers, keeping an eye on trial results and that I'm talking to people who are on these medications to learn more from them, to translate the really messy and murky and shifting science into a way that people can understand. It's really important to have evidence based answers to some of the questions that people have, especially about something as vital as a medication they're taking. That's what you get when you subscribe to the New York Times. If you already subscribe, thanks. If you'd like to go to mytimes.com subscribe.

[B]

I want to talk about comedy. Not just infowars comedy, but just sort of more broadly comedy in the Trump administration. A lot of comedians have said, and I've heard you guys discuss this, that satire is really hard in the Trump administration, which is I've never quite understood exactly why. And I feel like it's not the perspective that you guys have taken. And so I wonder if, Tim, you can explain what you think the opportunity is for comedy that other comedians who say that are missing.

[E]

Sure. I mean, you try to get to very universal, you know, human feelings. I'm not trying to just go like, haha, look at Trump's orange complexion. I want to get into like, what is it about being a human being that gets you to the place where you're doing that to yourself. And I want to try to do that in a entertaining or funny way. I think it's also okay to. At this moment in time, it's enough to just go like, whatever the debacle is this week, whatever the insanity is, I think it's enough right now. You can just go, I think that's crazy. And if you can try to do it in a funny, witty way, at least people out there looking for signals that they're not alone can get something. They can get like, okay, I'm not crazy. That's crazy.

[B]

I wanna ask you guys, though, like, the way you are describing what you're doing does not sound ideological, but just to push back a little bit. Like, I went to the Onion website earlier today, and there's like, a zillion headlines about Trump and RFK Jr. Ken Paxton.

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'm. As somebody who's red the Onion, I know that you made fun of Biden. I know that you make fun of Democrats. I get that. But there's something called the Babylon Bee, which, for people that don't know is. It is described.

[E]

Very funny stuff.

[B]

It is described as like the Onion for conservatives, basically. The implication being that you guys have a liberal ideological bend.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And I think that certainly in this moment, you could get that impression. Looking at the Onion website, I want to understand, like, how broad are you trying to appeal in terms of an audience?

[E]

I would just say that I don't think about an audience often. I just try to express what's inside of me out into the world. And it will be ideological a lot of the time, because I have a point of view. But I will say infowars isn't going to be overtly political necessarily, and maybe not really at all. I mean, we're making fun of food influencers, and we'll be making fun of people that certainly voted for, you know, Mamdani in New York, you know, and our friend, like, you gotta, of course, look at the world around you and see things that you kind of cringe at, even though you might ideologically align with them. And we're not gonna be afraid to do that. But we are not interested in punching down. We're not looking at making fun of swaths of people because we're essentially scared of them.

[C]

Yeah. The most recent takedown request we got from a politician was from a very prominent Democrat. You know, that's. We really do hammer all sides. The Democratic Party's really upset at us because they think that we SANK Joe Biden's 2024 campaign.

[B]

Because you didn't cheer him on? Is that the idea?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

And I'm not going to ever step in on that sort of thing, ever.

[B]

I wonder if you guys succeed, if the website takes off. Besides the financial benefit of succeeding, whatever that looks like, whatever your metrics are, just what do you think you will have accomplished? Besides sidelining Alex Jones, Besides making him less offensive or powerful?

[E]

I mean, creating another place for quality art and media to exist that is pretty damn independent. I mean, this is one of the few bastions of not this monopolized super companies that we're having to live with. So what we hope to have accomplished in, let's say, five years is we've retrained people's brains to think of infowars, meaning something fundamentally different and separate it from that ghoul. If he wants to tell people about Charlie Kirk faking his own death or something, he's free to do it on the side of the highway.

[C]

You know, everything about Inforce was horrible except the branding and the catchphrase they came up with. And their catchphrase is, there's a war on for your mind. Which is just a perfect sentence. It's a beautiful sentence.

[E]

Right.

[C]

And that will remain a thing that we do, basically like a mission statement or something to point at where there has been a war on for your mind for the last 10 years. There's no question about that. Like, we have lived through that. And I would say normal people have lost in part because they didn't know they were in a fight. And we're going to give people the ability to make fun of the processes and the ways people get information. That's going to be the through line that gets us through this. And, like, characters and ideas and things are going to build out of that. We are constantly being inundated with a bunch of insane garbage and bullshit, frankly. And that bullshit had no counterweight. And we're going to try to do that.

[E]

Yeah, I think. Sorry to interrupt you, but I've been thinking over the years a lot about darkness and comedy and death and comedy. And it is a way to, like, survive the chaos of the world on a very deep level. Like the comedians, the writers, whoever, creatives that go into those dark places are doing it at a service for themselves to sort of exercise the fear of these real things. And then that gets received by an audience. And I think it does a service to make them feel like, okay, this is something that happens and we have to laugh about it. There's obviously lots of things we could do about it, but it's just like making you feel like all this crazy shit is hanging over our heads, but we shouldn't be afraid of it all the time.

[B]

Ben, Tim, thank you both so much for joining us.

[C]

Thank you.

[E]

I really appreciate it.

[B]

After we spoke to Ben and Tim, we reached out to representatives for Alex Jones tasked for comment about the Onion's takeover of Infowars, but they did not respond. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Calls mounted on Monday for the resignation of Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine, and after a former girlfriend accused him of rape. In an interview with Politico, the former girlfriend, Jenny Racicot, described an incident during which Platner let himself into her home and forced himself on her, despite her repeated pleas for him to stop. In a social media post, Platner denied the allegations and said he would take time to, quote, reflect on the path forward. Both parties see Maine as a battle in the midterms and a deciding race over who will control the Senate. Prominent Democrats withdrew their endorsements of Platner after the allegations surfaced on Monday, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representative Ro Khanna and Senator Ruben Gallego. The Senate Democratic campaign arm which had opposed Platner in the primary, also called for him to quit and pledged to withhold financial support from his campaign if he remained in the race. Today's episode was produced by Caitlin o' Keefe and Chris Benderev. It was edited by Mark George with help from Ben Calhoun, Michael Benoit and Paige Cowett, and contains Music by Pat McCusker, Alicia Baetube and Marian Lozano. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. That's it for the Daily I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.

[D]

Jira by Atlassian where your team and your coding agents work from the same context. Try it [e-mail] that's jira.dev.