Drudge On Jones: Bizarre Conspiracies And Falsehoods

Alex Jones Is America's Leading Conspiracy Theorist Who Believes The Government Was Behind 9-11 And Other Catastrophes. Matt Drudge, creator and operator of The Drudge Report, appeared in-studio for an October 6 interview with Alex Jones. Jones is the host of The Alex Jones Show and proprietor of the conspiracy website Infowars.com. His biography states he “is considered one of the very first founding fathers of the 9-11 Truth Movement,” which believes the government was behind the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Jones has also pushed conspiracy theories about the Oklahoma City bombing, Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, Boston Marathon bombing, and several mass shootings. [Media Matters, 4/2/15]

CNN: Drudge Pushed “Paranoid Conspiracy Theories With Little Basis In Reality,” Including Claim That Obama Came Up With “ISIS” Name Because It Sounded Like Darrell Issa. CNN's Dylan Byers wrote:

The nearly 45-minute rant oscillated wildly between familiar critiques of the establishment and paranoid conspiracy theories with little basis in reality. At one point, Drudge suggested that the Obama administration came up with the name “ISIS” -- for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria -- because it sounded like the last name of Rep. Darrell Issa, the Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. [CNN.com, 10/6/15]

Drudge Complains About “Cover-up” Of “Hillary's Lovers.” Drudge stated: “Why aren't we seeing Hillary's lovers? Excuse me? Why aren't we seeing Hillary's lovers? Where's the cover-up on this? So many issues that are suppressed on a daily basis.” [YouTube.com, 10/6/15]

Drudge: Hillary “Is Old And She's Sick” And The Country Might Be “Left With Hillary's Brain In The Oval Office In A Jar.”

DRUDGE: You've got to be the greatest you can be. Now. Now. Before this country is so completely altered and we're left with Hillary's brain in the Oval Office in a jar. 'Cuz that's what we're getting. She is old and she's sick. She is not a contender. They're making her a contender with these propped up Saturday Night Live things. It's like a head on a stick. And then on the Today show with [Savannah Guthrie] Aguthrie [sic] -- a head on a stick. [YouTube.com, 10/6/15]

Drudge: 80 Million “Illegals” Are Living In The United States. During a rant about Hillary Clinton, Drudge said: “She is not a viable, vibrant leader for this country of 300 -- including the illegals, 380 million -- Americans. So the media is trying to put us to sleep.” In reality, the Pew Research Center estimates that “11.3 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the U.S. in 2014,” based on government data. [YouTube.com, 10/6/15; Pew Research Center, 7/22/15]

Drudge: Only “Sick” People Support Gun Laws. After suggesting that Hillary Clinton and President Obama should disarm their security if they support regulations on guns, Drudge stated: “You know what would happen in 30 seconds? Both of those people would no longer be on Planet Earth. So they're asking us to drop our guns and to drop our security measures, or, or what? So this thing is very real, and I don't see how it's being taken seriously, except for the sick voter. You can't underestimate the sickness of the American people right now. They're really sick.” [YouTube.com, 10/6/15]

Drudge Has Heavily Promoted Jones Over The Years And Helped Him “Break Out”

Jones On Meeting Drudge: “Deer In The Headlights ... Star-struck.” Jones described meeting Drudge by stating: “I have never had a deer in the headlights experience this crazy 'cuz I'm not really a fan of like rock stars, movie stars, people like that. I like politics. And I'm sitting there during that 70-second break and Matt Drudge rounds the corner over here and it was just like total and complete deer in the headlights. And I'm still double-taking here.” Jones later added that he was “star-struck” by Drudge. [YouTube.com, 10/6/15]

Drudge To Jones: “You're A Romantic Figure, Alex, In Americana.” Drudge praised Jones during the interview:

DRUDGE: You're a romantic figure, Alex, in Americana. It's romantic what you do here every day. It just is. This is romance. Because you're an American standing up, tough, facing these headwinds. Wow are they blowing. But you're there. And you're not alone. Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, Levin. There's a lot of people on the airwaves who are as brave. They are brave, and they are living it. I've met 'em all. I'm friends with them all. They are also operating against the grain in an America that needs to go back to that. [YouTube.com,10/6/15]

Drudge On Jones: “One Hell Of A Broadcast In Such Homogenized Media!” In an April 2013 tweet -- Drudge has since removed all his tweets -- Drudge wrote: “Privately told friends would be year of Alex Jones. Never met or talked with the man, but one hell of a broadcast in such homogenized media.” [Media Matters, 4/23/13]

Drudge Is An Influential Traffic Driver To Jones. During the interview, Jones noted that Drudge links to stories on Jones' website. An April 2013 Media Matters review found that the Drudge Report promoted at least 50 separate articles at Jones' Infowars website up to that point in 2013, and had linked to at least 244 different articles on the site in the previous two years. The Drudge-linked articles included numerous conspiracies, including misinformation about government ammunition purchases; a piece suggesting conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart may have been killed in retaliation for his conservative activism instead of natural causes; a claim that Obama's birth certificate was purportedly a forgery; and claims that the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooter may have been under CIA influence. [YouTube.com, 10/6/15; Media Matters, 3/26/13]

Jones On Drudge: “One Source Who Really Helped Us Break Out, Who Took Our Information, Helped To Punch It Out To An Even More Effective Level.” New York magazine wrote in a 2011 piece about Drudge and Jones:

It was Matt Drudge, whose obsessions with overreaching corporations like Google and his daily charting of the most granular signs of the Apocalypse add a nonpartisan element to his site's right-wing cant, who did more than anyone else to make Jones more visible. “If you had to say there was one source who really helped us break out, who took our information, helped to punch it out to an even more effective level, he's the guy,” says Jones. “Three years ago, there was almost no news coverage of Bilderberg [an elite conference] in this country; there was an electronic Berlin Wall. Drudge, every year, takes our reportage and links to it on our site.”

Jones says that it's now “intensifying how much he links to us and promotes us,” recalling how Drudge, this past Christmas, made every link on the site green for the holidays--except links to Infowars, which Drudge published in red. “It was like a Christmas present,” says Jones. [New York, 4/4/11]