Responding to controversy over claims he made about “the Jewish mafia,” conspiracy theorist Alex Jones attacked “the Jewish press” that reported on his claims, saying the outlets are “complicit in covering up the stuff that is going on.”

During the March 29 broadcast of The Alex Jones Show, Jones, a prominent media ally of President Donald Trump, responded to a caller pushing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory by saying, “Well there is undoubtedly a Jewish mafia and the [Anti-Defamation League] will say you’re anti-Semitic. No, there’s an Italian mafia, Irish mafia, Jewish mafia, Jamaican mafia, and there’s mafias, there’s Dixie mafia. And absolutely, the Jewish mafia, then, if you criticize it, it says you’re anti-Semitic, but the Jewish mafia is a very powerful mafia.”

In his remarks, Jones also said that the Jewish mafia “worked with Hitler” and claimed that “the head of the Jewish mafia is [financier and philanthropist] George Soros; he’s out to get Jews.”

Several Jewish news outlets reported on Jones’ comments. Jones criticized these outlets, saying on his March 30 broadcast, “It really is disgusting what the sell-out media, whether it’s the Jewish press and all this, that always attacks people that expose this. I just have to ask The Forward and everybody else, what the hell, man? I mean, are you really want to be complicit in covering up the stuff that is going on when you know, when any Jews that I talk to that are educated know all about this.”

Throughout the segment, Jones’ largely focused on reporting from Jewish publication The Forward. Jones falsely claimed, “They don’t give all my quotes or all my comments where I said he was a Nazi that fed on Jews and rounded them up.” (The Forward’s article did include the relevant transcript posted by Media Matters that contextualized Jones’ claims, including quoting him as saying Soros is “out to get Jews.”)

During the segment, Jones singled out the author of the Forward article by name -- while showing an enlarged image of her face on the online broadcast of his show -- and said the reporter “looks like she’s 12 years old. I’m glad you’re there to expose the anti-Semites, sweetheart.”

Jones also revived the years-old smear that as a child, Soros, who is Jewish, was a Nazi collaborator and claimed that Soros “had a Hungarian handler and they would send him in when he was 13, 14, 15, 16 to ferret out where Jews were hidden and then they would rob all their stuff and sell them out to the Nazis.”

This version of history is incorrect, as Tablet has reported:

After his father made the agonizing decision to split up his family in the hopes of a better chance of its partial survival, Soros was given forged documents and sent to live in hiding with a Hungarian official charged with confiscating property from the country homes of deported Jews. This man occasionally brought the young Soros along, rather than leave him alone in a war-torn city that the retreated Germans were beginning to blow up. This official, who confiscated Jewish property yet also, at incredible personal risk, saved the life of a Jewish boy, is a human contradiction that [Glenn] Beck’s idiot Manicheanism is ill-equipped to handle.

Jones’ claim echoes comments made by conservative radio host Glenn Beck in 2010 when he said Soros “used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off.” Then-Anti-Defamation League Executive Director Abraham Foxman called those claims “completely inappropriate, offensive,” and “horrific,” explaining that “to hold a young boy responsible for what was going on around him during the Holocaust as part of a larger effort to denigrate the man is repugnant.”