Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, best known for spreading misinformation about the Sandy Hook Massacre with his Infowars site and ending up on the hook for a $1.5 billion with the victims’ parents, is now being mocked openly from inside the offices that will take over his platform.
The Onion, after years of legal battles, is finally set to take over the site in a rental deal that essentially leases the Infowars platform for $81,000 a month. And it announced this week that it’s putting comedian Tim Heidecker in charge of the creative operation.
Heidecker, 50, donning a newly shaved head to look more like Jones, announced on Instagram on Tuesday that he had been appointed creative director of the site, mocking Jones in the process.
On Thursday, Heidecker posted another video, this time from the Onion’s offices. “It’s Tim Heidecker, checking in here. I’m in The Onion headquarters here,” he said in his raspy Jones-esque voice, celebrating that he was with “a bunch of guys trying to come up with funny ideas.”
“They got all the posters of all their dumb ideas—women’s bathroom, gender identity, whatever,” he quipped, circling his phone’s camera around the office, sticking it in various Onion employees’ faces.
“We’re going to disrupt, right? We’re going to storm the gates, trial by combat, whatever it takes,” Heidecker declared, a reference to Jones’s inciting comments ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“They got kombucha now. They’re making everybody here drink kombucha. And it’s making everybody turn into little lizards. Turn into little lizards running around,” he continued, as Jones.
Heidecker continued jokingly taunting the office’s inhabitants, who laughed heartily in the background. “Are we taking over Infowars?” he asked The Onion CEO—and former Daily Beast editor—Ben Collins. “Yes, that’s what’s going to happen,” Collins replied.
“Anyhow, it’s been a great launch. We’re excited. Onion is on fire. I couldn’t be happier. Everybody, Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, NPR, PBS, NBC, they’re all sucking on my d---. They can’t wait.”
Jones had a meltdown on Wednesday, reacting to the news that The Onion had finally pulled off its takeover of his site, with the mission to turn it into a parody of itself.
One of the Onion’s initial attempts to buy the site after Jones filed for bankruptcy for spreading lies about the school shooting that left 20 first-graders and six staff members dead in 2012, repeatedly using his platform to claim it was a hoax, was to enlist the help of the families of the deceased to buy Jones’s site. A judge disrupted the sale, prompting the site to take its new approach.
Jones crashed an Infowars livestream to react on Tuesday, “Just because you’re wearing my shirt doesn’t mean you’re me!” He added, referencing the “body snatchers” taking over his site, “You can’t take something over and then act like you’re somebody, even if you say it’s a parody.”
He also said in his rant, “They’re going to misrepresent that they’re us to confuse people and, quote, ‘rip people off like Alex Jones did’...“They’re going to make money. The whole thing’s about defaming me!”
But Heidecker, 50, known for his Tim & Eric web series with partner Eric Wareheim, rubbed salt in the wound as he and The Onion’s employees laughed at Jones’s tantrums.
