It lingers in the fear that neighborhood residents continue to feel months after a gunman — who came from North Carolina to “self-investigate” the situation — opened fire there in December.
And it lingers in the continuing, if evidence-free, belief of gullible people about what was claimed to be happening there — not only that the restaurant was the site of sex trafficking but that Hillary Clinton and her presidential-campaign chairman, John Podesta, were deeply involved.
“I made comments about Mr. Alefantis that in hindsight I regret and for which I apologize to him,” said Jones in a six-minute video released last week, titled “A Note to Our Listening, Viewing and Reading Audiences Concerning Pizzagate Coverage.”
“We relied on third-party accounts of alleged activities and conduct at the restaurant,” Jones said. “We also relied on accounts of reporters who are no longer with us.”
This has about the same level of sincerity as the downcast “sorry” muttered by a 6-year-old after kicking his brother while Dad glowers over him with a yardstick in hand.
Jones, of course, is a great favorite of President Trump, who was interviewed on his radio show last year. Trump has cited as fact some of Jones’s outlandish ideas — for example, that the news media has covered up terrorism by Islamist extremists — and has complimented his “amazing reputation.”
No surprise, then, that Jones, who at best can be called a conspiracy theorist and at worst a cynical wacko, recently bragged about his ability to get White House press credentials, should he want them. Trump’s crony, the political trickster Roger Stone, said he thinks that’s a good idea.
Alex Jones: The louder he yells, it seems the more people listen Embed Share Play
Alex Jones was a powerful underground voice for the alternative conservative media, but he became a more mainstream figure in December 2015, when Donald Trump, then a Republican presidential candidate, spent 30 minutes on Jones's radio program, "Info Wars."
If Jones were really interested in cleaning up the bilge he spreads, he wouldn’t be starting now.
He would have recanted the disgusting claim that schoolchildren were not gunned down in Newtown, Conn., in 2012 and that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a government-run hoax to take away gun rights.
He would have taken back claims that fluoridated water is a government plot to control your mind.
He would have done penance for spreading the lies that 9/11 was an inside job and that Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen.
But none of those lies seem to have merited a second thought.
As my colleague Paul Farhi reported over the weekend, the timing of Jones’s apology suggests he was concerned about a potential lawsuit, since his remorse came after he received a letter from Alefantis’s lawyer last month.
Farhi wrote: “Under Texas law, the Austin-based Jones had to retract or apologize for the stories by Friday — one full month after receiving Alefantis’s letter — to avoid exposing Infowars to punitive damages in a libel suit.” And Friday, indeed, was the very day that Jones’s apology video was aired.
Friday was also the day that the Comet Ping Pong gunman, Edgar Welch, pleaded guilty to assault and weapons charges.
