But the video of Carlson’s interview with Jones, which has been viewed more than 16 million times, got the attention of X owner Elon Musk, who posted a poll asking if Jones should return and then restored Jones’s account over the weekend. Jones thanked Carlson on Monday morning for the interview: “It enabled me to escape the phantom zone and let the world know what I really stand for!”
- Carlson, who started a show on X after he was dropped from Fox News in April following the settlement of a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, sat down with Jones in an interview posted to X on Thursday. Carlson has been an ally of Jones’s for years, and has criticized Fox for not defending the conspiracy theorist, who has been ordered by courts to pay Sandy Hook families $1.5 billion for his false theories about the 2012 school shooting. “Alex Jones is not a crazy person,” Carlson said in the interview.
- During the interview, which was littered with false claims, Jones noted how users on X often ask Musk to reinstate him. “I trend all the time: ‘Hey, if you’re such an absolutist on free speech, bring back Alex Jones,’” said Jones, who was banned in 2018 in what was described at the time as a permanent suspension. “I understand that [Musk] needs to go through a process before he does that.”
- After Musk responded to an X user who told him it was time to bring back Jones’s account, Musk launched a poll Saturday asking, “Reinstate Alex Jones on this platform?” Musk had previously supported Jones’s ban, but with 70 percent of the nearly 2 million respondents saying Jones should return, Musk wrote, “The people have spoken and so it shall be.”
Jones’s return to X after his interview with Carlson comes at an interesting time for three men regularly embroiled in controversy.
The Sandy Hook families have offered Jones a deal to settle the $1.5 billion debt for only about 6 percent of what he owes them. While lawyers described the proposal last month as a viable way to help resolve the bankruptcy cases that Jones faces for himself and his company, Free Speech Systems, the attorneys for the victims slammed Jones for failing to curb his spending, change his “extravagant lifestyle” or produce financial documents in court. Vickie L. Driver, Jones’s personal bankruptcy attorney, has suggested that the settlement offer was still too high and that it was unrealistic that he would be able to pay it.
Musk has faced blowback in recent weeks after he amplified antisemitic tropes on the platform in an act the White House described as an “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.” Major advertisers such as Disney, IBM and Apple have fled the platform after a liberal media watchdog reported that corporate ads were appearing alongside hate speech. X has sued the watchdog and called the report “intentionally deceptive.” Musk later apologized for an antisemitic tweet but not before unleashing an expletive-filled rant toward advertisers who pulled their money.
Months after Carlson started his show on X, he announced he is launching his own subscription streaming service for $72 a year. “We’ve been out of work for seven or eight months now,” he said in a video announcing the Tucker Carlson Network. “Hard to know, time flies when you’re unemployed.”
Not long after Jones was reinstated, Musk invited the Infowars founder to an X Spaces conversation on Sunday. Jones was joined by a panel of far-right figures that included Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Andrew Tate, a social media personality and self-described misogynist who was charged with rape and human trafficking in Romania.
During a discussion that saw Jones ask who left their phone unmuted as they were peeing during the live stream (it was Ramaswamy), Musk asked Jones about Sandy Hook.
“One of the questions I really have to just get out of the way, and you’re probably talking about this already before, is the whole Sandy Hook thing. So what exactly did you say and what is wrong with that situation?” Musk asked.
Jones apologized and said that the mass shooting that killed 20 children and six adults was indeed real and not staged by “crisis actors” as he had repeatedly falsely claimed. But he also argued that he was playing “devil’s advocate” and that he, like former president Donald Trump, was the victim of a politically motivated judge.
“I just take calls and interview guests and that I play devil’s advocate,” Jones said. “And if that hurt people’s feelings, I apologize. But I did not send people to your houses. I did not pee on graves. I don’t know any of the stuff that went on.”
Jones thanks Carlson after X account is reinstated
On Monday, as Jones was settling back into his X account, he praised Carlson for an interview that helped persuade Musk to lift his years-long ban.
“Tucker broke the Matrix!!” Jones exclaimed.
