The Onion’s New Infowars

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0:59Hey everyone, a quick heads up before we get started. There is some swearing in today's episode. You've been warned.

1:16I'm your host, Tim Heidecker. We have officially taken over InfoWars now. This is a new dawn. You think that Alex Jones gorged himself on Whataburger? You're saying five triple cheeseburgers and how many fry boxes? If you watched the real InfoWars livestream over the last few days, this is what you got. Not the actual Alex Jones, but this gloriously deranged parody from comedian Tim Heidecker. They know more than you, and yet you don't provide any evidence. So I think you're the one that's full of shit. Fake news sites are going to be running with this wild. They're going to be running wild with this story.

1:54We have leaked video now revealing that Alex Jones... Alex Jones, in the parody universe, is dead. Which we'll get to. But what you need to know is that in real life, the satire news site The Onion has been in a legal battle trying to take over Infowars for two years. Ever since Jones lost a landmark defamation case filed by the Sandy Hook families and declared bankruptcy. The process is tied up in court, but Tim Heidecker and CEO Ben Collins launched their live stream anyway. When he's not doing an impression, Heidecker sounds a lot more low-key, which made me wonder how he started doing a very good Alex Jones in the first place.

2:39Tim Heidecker: I think in 2016, he was very prominent on the internet. And I went to the Republican National Convention with my friend Vic Berger to like make a special about the convention. And he was going to be there. And I was just in the car going there watching him and was just doing it actually on Snapchat, which I was using for just like a month until I lost my username or something. But they had that thing where you could like put somebody else's face on your face. And so I was just doing these like live streams as Alex Jones talking about, you know, Roger Stone and, you know, Locker Up and all that stuff.

3:27Tim Heidecker: And it just kind of worked. I don't know. I just kind of did it. But I've never really done it for a long period of time. And leading up to this launch of InfoWars took me, I was a little like, oh, I don't, it's hard, much harder to do over a sustained period of time. Like hours of talking like that is not the best for my long-term health. Well, yeah, like physically or for your psyche? Oh, physically. Yeah, my psyche's fine. My psyche's not affected by any of this stuff. you've always done i think we could say absurdist comedy tim and eric um you know some of those things feel like you're in a fever dream and alex jones and info wars feels not unlike an extension of those things except that it's painfully real did that previous work prepare you for this uh well i think everything you uh you do prepares you for the next thing you do um yeah i i suppose so i mean i've been doing this a long time so there's a uh comfortability in in the process of creating things i guess and just a natural um desire to do it and but the absurdity side, I guess, I don't know.

4:58Tim Heidecker: Um, I think it's why I'm attracted to people like Alex Jones, uh, not, not, uh, sexually attracted, but interested in his, uh, mind and, and the way he presents himself is fat is interesting to me. Cause it does feel like, you know, everything from everything that we do, that's, um, maybe perceived as absurd always starts from like a real place of this, something like this exists, and we're going to expand upon it and go deeper and weirder with it. Today on the show, we go deeper and weirder with Tim Heidecker about the new InfoWars and his vision to make a new media empire out of the old conspiracy sites ashes.

5:43I'm Lizzie O 'Leary, sitting in for Mary Harris. You're listening to What Next? Stick around.

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9:37Do you remember how you got on board with this project? Like, did Ben Collins come to you and say, all right, let's do this? How'd that happen?

9:44Tim Heidecker: I reached out to them originally because when the original sale was potentially going to happen or the auction, which was a couple of years ago now, it was in the news everywhere. And I was doing my podcast Office Hours, and we use a lot of Alex Jones clips, and we used to talk about him a lot more. And I was just curious. I wanted to connect with them and see if I could be of some kind of assistance. But that was not, I never heard back from them, actually, at that period. It was like, I guess it fell apart. And then they reached out to me like six months later. And we're just, the question really was, if you were in, this might be happening, we might be getting InfoWars.

10:32Tim Heidecker: What do you think we should do with it? Like what, they were just kind of looking for advice. and I guess maybe in their head they were thinking I could be more involved. And after like six or seven phone calls and meetings and stuff, it kind of got defined as I would love to be the creative director of this and help you figure out how to move forward and what that would look like. So we had our first taste of what this might look like last Thursday and into the weekend when you put out your first live stream, this mockumentary about American history. Also, one of these stories involves the death, I'm using air quotes, of Alex Jones.

11:14How did you come up with the idea of Alex Jones exploding?

11:18Tim Heidecker: I think I made an offhand remark on my podcast where I just said he popped like a balloon. And he is such like a round man, like, no, I don't want to fat shame anybody, but he He does look like he's about like, it reminds me a lot of the Monty Python meaning of life sketch where the guy is just eating guy. Yeah. And he just has the wafer and blows up. So it just kind of, he reminds me of that guy. And so I said that, and then we were sitting around trying to figure out what this new show is going to be. And I think there's a lot of, I don't say, I wouldn't say anyone's asking for this, but there's a lot of, we want to do some little wish fulfillment.

11:59or just like live in a pretend world where you can pretend that this is happening.

12:06Tim Heidecker: And, you know, he's so he's just trafficked in conspiracy theories and, you know, crisis actors and and really has such little respect for the truth and for other people's feelings and other people's experiences. experiences and certainly as, as, as focused as you can imagine it being on the families of the Sandy hook tragedy that we were just like, well, let's just give him, let's, let's just serve him back what he's been serving for years, which is a bunch of bullshit, you know, a bunch of, and I'm speaking out of character here, of course, but, and I think everyone gets that. It's just muddy the waters, make it like, give, like go on the offense a little bit And, you know, create this messy, stupid conspiracy theory that anybody with a brain knows isn't true.

13:00Tim Heidecker: But just make it annoying and confusing. And we're going to expand upon this conspiracy theory that Alex Jones exploded. And there's a new imposter, Alex Jones. Create a fake one. A fake one. They've created, you know, capital T, they've created a fake one. And I don't want to give anything away why or how, but that's kind of going to continue on. But yeah, it's just fun. And I saw that, I mean, I don't really go on Twitter, but I was like, oh, let me take a look. And they're losing their hair over it. And oh, this is a death threat. And I was just like, fuck you. We're just going to keep, we're going to go hard.

13:39Tim Heidecker: And we're like, we have to go hard on this. You can't just go like middle ground on this. You have to go. We have to go to that place with it or it's not really worth it for me. I noticed that he does not explode once on camera. He explodes like, well, how many times? I was like, oh, he blew up again. Oh, one more time. Like, it's really egregious. Yeah. I mean, the sound design is really fun. Like, it's just like a it's like a rim shot now. You know, it's like a comedy rim shot. The the blowing and the and the car alarm. It just works. And yeah, we're just going to keep doing that probably, you know, and everywhere whenever we bring it up.

14:16Tim Heidecker: and it just also gives people that are frustrated. Like I've noticed since we put that out that people that are just watching this and living in this world, they're just frustrated by what they see and all the lying and all the craziness and, and gaslighting. It gives them something, a tool to play with. You know, I just noticed it like somebody on one of the comments that's pro Alex Jones, I guess, or doesn't like what we're doing. It's just like, you know, you don't really, you don't, he's doing us his he's you didn't get rid of him he's still doing this other show and there's like hundreds of people just being like no he's not he exploded he popped like a balloon that's an imposter like just just like flood this like like they do just flood the zone with bullshit um for a change have you heard anything from him since that aired i haven't no i haven't i think his son Rex Jones chimed in and you know they're they're I think like they've made a huge strategic mistake originally when this came out and they found out that when we announced it and he came out and tore his shirt off and said I was stealing his body and then they found all the old Tim and Eric clips and really lost it and it was pretty pathetic you know and it's like we caught the big fat whale and you know he's just like uh on the beach like a beached whale gasping for any relevance and it was embarrassing and i think maybe they learned the lesson that it's best to ignore us but it's probably going to be pretty hard because we're hoping that you know we're going to continue this for a little while and it's going to be hard for him to keep quiet on it so uh the more he's yeah the more he we're trying to draw him in like not to give away our strategy But you want to draw him in because then he's not wasting.

16:06Tim Heidecker: He's not hurting anybody else for a few minutes or he's not, you know, spreading more ridiculous lies about innocent people. So we want to waste his time. Do you think he can resist being baited? We'll see. I mean, I'm sure he's I mean, he also has a tremendous amount of airtime to fill. And that's like, you know, summer, the summer slump is probably happening. and they're like, well, we got to fill the air with something so we could sell our pills that don't work. So we talked a little bit about sort of the original phone call with Ben, but I'm just really curious, like what sold you on? Yes, I want to do this.

16:48I want to be the creative director for this new Infowars onion extension thing. What made you go for it?

16:57Tim Heidecker: I mean, the real reason is I can't say no to anything. So I just have to say yes and live with my decisions. No, but I think I didn't want to just like live in a world of satirizing this guy forever. I think pretty early on, we're like, let's goof on Alex for a little while in this world, the conspiracy world. But we have this is a viable media enterprise that I'm really interested in for the sake of comedy and opportunity for outsider or sort of fringe comedy. And we're all witnessing sort of the death of or sort of like the consolidation of corporate media and very few outlets and channels for the kind of comedy I like.

17:53Tim Heidecker: And so they saw that too. And I would, in my old age now, I would love to be more of a mentor and, you know, offer a place for the new generation to come up and have some funding and distribution in place. And what greater irony would it be for, you know, this this empire that Alex built to be turned into this, you know, fairly diverse and progressive and, you know, artsy fartsy kind of comedy streaming site. Do you guys have the resources to do that? I mean, my understanding is obviously you have Onion subscriptions and then Jeff Lawson, who is the owner, is putting money into this. Yeah, we got a billionaire on our side, so I think we're going to be okay.

18:47They turn fast, though.

18:48Tim Heidecker: That's true. No, I mean, to be seen, like, I think, like, to be frank, the next year or so will be a proving stage for us to see what this is, see if it's viable and working. And hopefully we show that there's a future in this and that more money can come in to, you know, we're definitely. Yeah, it's a period of discovery and hopefulness, but we're paying people to make things, and that will, you know, we're planting seeds. And in the fall, we will hopefully have a beautiful harvest, which I'm really appreciating my own analogy here. Even though that should happen in the spring, but we'll see.

19:41I think, yeah, we could harvest in the fall. Fall harvest. Fall harvest. Yeah. I know it's complicated and I know it's still murky. What is the current state of the acquisition of Infowars? So my understanding is the Onion won the auction to buy all the assets after their collapse. But now there are all these court rulings and back and forth. Like, where are we now?

20:03Tim Heidecker: As I understand it, and I'm not a lawyer, but The Onion had reached a deal, an agreement with the receiver who is a person who does, you know, it's like somebody, almost like a notary public or notary public or whatever. Like he's just a guy who is in charge of all the assets that Alex had to give up in bankruptcy. and so they've reached a deal to lease all that the ip essentially all we're really talking about to be honest is the ip is is the access to the dns server for uh infowars.com and then some possible you know footage and archive and and archive stuff so you know and maybe some gear i don't know but that's uh that's the agreement that that was in place and then alex's attorneys, uh, somehow backroom to deal with this, with the Texas, uh, court of appeals and got them to put an emergency stay on, on anything happening.

21:15Tim Heidecker: And so it basically tells the receiver, you can't do anything until we have this resolved. And every other court in the land include, and all the other Texas courts have come in and said, lift this now, this is ridiculous. So it's sitting there to be lifted. And about a month or maybe a couple weeks ago, as we were approaching this, we all just agreed like, well, who cares? Let's just go. The courts are completely meaningless here, it seems. There's no reason to abide by them. And no one's going to sue anybody. so uh you know alex is toothless in this he has no standing it's between the courts and this uh receiver so we just said well we'll just be real info wars and see what and and come you know come and come at us and see what see what you got have you ever talked to him alex jones yeah no i i i was during that period of 2016 when we were at the um uh republican national they were live streaming on the street and I interrupted their live stream.

22:28Tim Heidecker: It's on YouTube, but you could see me doing my Alex Jones for him, uh, to his reporter that was there. And, um, he was amused, you know, as, as anybody, as any, if someone's doing a pretty good impression of you, I think that's kind of amusing, but he didn't know who I was. He didn't know I was a world-class, uh, legendary comedian. When we come back, how can you satirize real life when it seems beyond parody?

23:09With the Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One, you earn unlimited 2 % cash back on every purchase and you get big purchasing power so your business can spend more and earn more. Steven, Brandon, and Bruno, the business owners of SandCloud, reinvested their 2 % cash back to help build the company's retail presence. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash SparkCash Plus. Terms apply. State fair food is getting smaller and pricier. We'll have room for fried cookies. Okay, you never overspend on food. What's your deal? What's his deal? He went to Metro and got$450 in value on the new Samsung Galaxy A37 5G for free.

23:50And no activation fees. Free phone? Oh, sign me up. Get that more for your money feeling. Only on Metro by T-Mobile. Bring your number and activate$40 period plan. $450 based on device discount waived activation fee. Not available if with Metro or T-Mobile in the past 180 days.

24:10it's impossible to talk about this project without talking about the sandy hook families um i know that ben collins has talked to them a lot i know merch money uh has gone to them

24:20Tim Heidecker: have you had conversations with them we had one um zoom meeting with everybody um a few months ago as we were preparing to launch this. And as you can imagine, it was very emotional. And it was everybody from The Onion was on. I was on with my writing team as we were working on this emergency and sort of the first bunch of content that we're going to do. And it was quite moving. And they were basically calling to thank us for what we had done up to that point. to stay kind of dogged on this and, and committed to it. And, um, you know, we had a couple of laughs about what we were up to, told them a couple of our ideas that really made them laugh.

25:12Tim Heidecker: You know, they're normal, you know, pretty normal people living, trying to live normal lives. And they didn't ask for any of this, uh, but they're incredibly brave and strong to like, to have gone through the trial and to push for this. And now, you know, they're just trapped in this Byzantine court legal maneuvering that surely is being funded by all the wrong people. I would imagine deep, dark money coming in because I don't know where Alex is getting any. I don't know how he's able to afford to, you know, put a quarter in the parking meter. but yet he thrives and continues to live and exist in the world.

25:57Tim Heidecker: So anyways, it was very moving. I had my personal connection to it was a little thin, but it was meaningful to me because on the day of the incident, the tragedy is the day that my wife and I found out we were having our first child. She had just got her pregnancy test confirmed by, or she found out, you know, she saw that the blue blue plus sign or whatever. And, um, and it was just like, Oh, this day, this beautiful moment is mixed in this terrible tragedy. It was very upsetting. I told the families that just that it's always been of all the, I mean, there's just so many you could list of these in the past 10 years, but that one is stands out as particularly gruesome horrifying you know just like the darkest of nightmares come to life so um and then to watch the uh if you watch the highly recommend on hbo the truth versus alex jones documentary that goes through the court case and you you should blood it should boil any any reasonable person's blood to see what he and his uh cronies put those families through pretty much immediately after it happened until, you know, recently.

27:15Tim Heidecker: Um, so, um, I expressed all that and they were grateful and encouraging and said, you know, go for, go to go dark, go hard, do what you do. You know, we have, you have our, we have your back and, um, see if you can, you know, they're not, it's not, and it's just like, it's not even about the money for them. It's just like justice and, And, you know, yeah, just paying, you know, consequences, paying for your consequences. And he has yet to really do it. But I feel like it's something we don't want to really let go of trying to see justice come for him. That's kind of what I'm trying to tease out, because you have this like incredible tragedy at the heart of this.

28:02and then what was done to them by Alex Jones. And then the method through which you all are pushing back is this like combination of absurdism and parody and aggression and kind of refusing to apologize that I think probably a lot of people on the left really love. It's like it's a fascinating brew of things all coming together. And I would just wonder how you think about that. Like, this is not purely absurdist comedy. There's a lot that's gone into it.

28:39Tim Heidecker: Oh, it's definitely not. I mean, there is absurdism in it if you're looking at, you know, why he exploded or, you know, the actual explosion itself. It's a little absurd and playful in a dark way. But yeah, I mean, I wrestle with it. I think it's not clear what the right thing to do is it's never clear, but sometimes, you know, there's arguments you could have where it's like, you should just ignore him or you should just, you know, keep him out of your, keep him out of it. But, and, and I, I have a hard time just being that disciplined, you know, and I am, uh, if I see something that makes me angry, I usually express it.

29:17Tim Heidecker: I don't try to, uh, suppress it, you know, I let it out. So, yeah, we're all figuring it out. I mean, it's like it is a ridiculously small operation we have. It is some really good people at The Onion, some people that I've worked with for a long time through office hours and on cinema that are coming together. And we're all just sitting around going, what should we do? And there's not much more to it than that. And I mean, that's the same everywhere, I guess, if you look at, if you scale that up, there's, everything comes down to, you know, well, what should we do? And then decisions are made.

30:00Tim Heidecker: So, yeah, I think from what I could tell, at the very least, it offers a whole bunch of people out there who are, don't really know how to vent their frustration or their disgust or their confusion or whatever about the state of things. This gives them like something to vent, to let steam out with, or just take their minds off it. It's, uh, we're, we're trying to like give an, give it, make stuff with an audience in mind that they can go and use. Like we launched this stupid InfoWars elf. That's really stupid. And you know, people. It's very stupid. Yeah. And, but. In a delightful way. Yeah. That like, uh, that went wild for a little while the other day.

30:43Tim Heidecker: Just like people making their own, memeing it, putting into things. Like we got more of that stuff. And it's just like giving the odd, giving that, that mass, uh, shall we call them the silent majority of normal people that see the world as a, not run by lizard people, you know, um, just giving them like a little, some tools to play with. And yeah, and then, you know, we're calling this the Infowars Summer, and that'll be coming out next week with a little new song from Nick Lutzko. And then I think in the fall, we want to just move to not thinking about Alex Jones anymore and just make some good stuff.

31:25Is it harder or easier to do this work now that reality feels like satire? satire i mean ben posted this thing on blue sky that like palantir's stock went up when the onion made a post about it right it's like this like meta on meta thing and it's sort of like i don't is it easier now that reality seems deranged um i get that question a lot and i never really know how to answer it because I think I don't think about it.

32:01Tim Heidecker: I think about like trying to make something that's going to be surprising and funny and meaningful on a, on a human level that reflects general fears, general anxieties, general flaws in the human condition that, um, should be recognized by anybody that it feels that, you know, that, that can recognize that. Um, so, you know, certainly a lot of it's inspirational and, uh, a lot of the insanity is inspirational and it reflects how flawed we are and how stupid we can be easier. And it might, It feels more relevant, you know, I think like, and it is like on cinema this week, my character like crashed his boat, flipped over his boat and nearly killed his partner.

33:00Tim Heidecker: And, you know, it was July 4th weekend. So I just looking in the newsfeed that's happening all over the country. Yeah. Like it's not that hard to believe. But I like setting things in a real and like, I like comedy that feels like it is set in, in the, in a, in a world that's possible. I mean, that's not, that sounds optimistic. That sounds optimistic, but it's like, it's not really the, to me, to us, I think it's not really about the, the, the specifics. It's like how the characters in them deal with them. That's where the comedy is always most effective for me. So, yeah, I think it makes it maybe easier now that I'm talking it out, which is these are this could actually happen.

33:44Tim Heidecker: This feels plausible. Like we have some next week's episode. Trump calls in. Anthony Antimic calls in and he says some very dark shit about 9-11. I'm not going to give away the jokes. Very dark. But you're like, well, this is relevant and this is timely because it's not that far from something this idiot would actually be saying. Like, I'm speaking of the president. So it's like you do want this grounded in a way. And unfortunately, the grounding now is on psychedelic silly putty. You know, like it's like the grounding that we're living in now is absurd. So maybe that's so absurdity sits quite well in it.

34:30Tim Heidecker, thank you so much for your time.

34:33Tim Heidecker: You're welcome. Nice talking to you. Tim Heidecker is a comedian and the creative director for the New Info Wars, now run by The Onion. All right, that's the show. What Next is produced by Rob Gunther, Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharm, and Patrick Ford. Paige Osborne is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TVD. Mia Lobel is the executive producer of podcasts here at Slate. And Ben Richmond is the senior director of podcast operations. I'm Lizzie O 'Leary. Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon.

35:19Being a serious business owner takes hard work, patience, and a drive to keep moving forward. So it's important to find a serious business card that goes the extra mile. With the VentureX Business Card from Capital One, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. And with big purchasing power, you can spend more and earn more. This is your sign to take your business to the next level. The Capital One VentureX Business Card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details. State fair food is getting smaller. And pricier. We'll have room for fried cookies. Okay, you never overspend on food.

35:54What's your deal? What's his deal? He went to Metro and got$450 in value on the new Samsung Galaxy A37 5G for free. And no activation fees. Free phone? Oh, sign me up. Get that more for your money feeling. Only on Metro by T-Mobile. Bring your number and activate$40 period plan. $450 based on device discount waived activation fee. Not available if with Metro or T-Mobile in the past 180 days.