After months of legal battles, The Onion is finally taking over Infowars, and comedian Tim Heidecker took the opportunity to rub it in Alex Jones’ face.
Heidecker, 50, opened the video by mocking Jones, 52, the conspiracy theorist whose site has been up for grabs since he declared bankruptcy in December 2022.
“I got some breaking news for you,” Heidecker said. “It’s looking very likely that Global Tetrahedron will seize control of Infowars in the coming days. The folks at Global Tetrahedron have asked me to step in to run the show over there and become a big part of the future.”
Global Tetrahedron, The Onion’s comically named parent company, has apparently found a way around a bankruptcy court’s decision that blocked its attempt to buy Infowars and make it into a parody of itself on Monday when it secured a deal to license the site from its court-appointed manager. The company will pay an $81,000-per-month licensing fee, according to The New York Times, which reports that the arrangement could still be up in the air should Jones file an appeal of a judge’s decision.
Until then, Heidecker, who was appointed the site’s creative director on Monday, riffed on The Onion’s plan for the site’s future.
“We’re looking forward to relaunching the site soon in the next coming months,” he said in his Instagram video, when he was done mocking Jones. “And we’re not really sure what we’re going to do with it. We’re talking about all sorts of ideas: playing around with it being a real estate broker service, or a cryptocurrency exchange market, a place to store pictures, almost like a Dropbox account. Not sure, a lot of ideas.”
The Onion’s initial attempt to purchase the site through bankruptcy auction was buoyed by the parents of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, who successfully sued the conspiracy theorist for repeatedly using Infowars to falsely claim that the massacre was a hoax, resulting in a $1.5 billion award judgment against Jones in Connecticut.
The Onion CEO—and former Daily Beast editor—Ben Collins gave a more straightforward outlook on future plans than the Tim & Eric star did when he told CNN that the site will operate as a “digital platform and comedy network” featuring independent comedians who “don’t have a mountain to climb in the comedy world.” He added, “We want to give them that mountain.”
Heidecker, who has been a vocal critic of MAGA media personalities like Joe Rogan, will parody Jones for the site, which Collins said will maintain The Onion’s satirical style.
