Daughter Of Slain Sandy Hook Elementary School Principal Writes Trump To Ask Him Not To Appear On Alex Jones’ Radio Show

Erica Lafferty, whose mother Dawn Hochsprung was principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed during the 2012 mass shooting at the school, has published an open letter to President-elect Donald Trump, urging him not to appear on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ radio show.

Jones, a leading conspiracy theorist, self-proclaimed founding father of the 9/11 Truth movement, and key Trump media ally during the 2016 race, has helped spread conspiracy theories that the Sandy Hook shooting, in which 20 children and six educators were killed, was a “hoax.”

During a December 2015 appearance on The Alex Jones Show, Trump praised Jones as having an “amazing” reputation and promised, “I will not let you down.” Following Trump’s victory, Jones said Trump called him to “thank” his audience and promised to appear on his show “in the next few weeks.”

Although Jones has since tried to spin his past comments on the shooting, PolitiFact rated the claim that Jones “said that the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there” to be “true.” PolitiFact noted that Jones has called the shooting “a giant hoax,” and said “Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured.”

In her letter to Trump, Lafferty wrote, “radio host Alex Jones has fanned the flames of a hateful conspiracy theory claiming that the shooting that took my mother never happened. It’s unthinkable. It’s unacceptable. I’m asking you to denounce it immediately and cut ties with Alex Jones and anyone who subscribes to these dangerous ideas.” Lafferty’s full letter (emphasis original):

Dear President-elect Trump,

My mother was shot and killed at Sandy Hook School four years ago, along with five of her colleagues and twenty first-graders.

Since then, radio host Alex Jones has fanned the flames of a hateful conspiracy theory claiming that the shooting that took my mother never happened.

It’s unthinkable. It’s unacceptable. I’m asking you to denounce it immediately and cut ties with Alex Jones and anyone who subscribes to these dangerous ideas.

You’ve appeared on Jones’ radio show, praised his “amazing” reputation and promised him that you “won’t let him down”. Now he’s claiming you’ve personally called to thank him after the election, and will be on his show again soon. That’s unacceptable.

My life changed forever when I lost my mother, as do the lives of the 91 Americans shot and killed every single day. You’ve promised to be a president for all of us. Well, that includes victims of gun violence and their families, like me.

I hope that you will not only refuse to go on his show, but that you will denounce the conspiracy theories that he spreads at the expense of gun violence survivors.

-- Erica Lafferty, daughter of Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, shot and killed at Sandy Hook School