[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]
Two of America’s best-known and most prolific conspiracy theorists, Infowars founder Alex Jones and author Jerome Corsi, who tirelessly pursued the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not an American citizen, announced this week they would be combining forces.
Jones told viewers that Corsi would be joining Infowars as its Washington bureau chief, moving his family to the Beltway from New York and heading up a planned news crew.
“We have a responsibility to be cities on the hill, broadcasting the truth,” Jones claimed during a weekend broadcast.
But Corsi’s hiring comes amid substantial confusion, as Jones claims the White House has offered Infowars press credentials despite White House denials.
“I know I can get White House credentials. We’ve already been offered them. We’re going to get them. But I’ve just got to spend the money to send somebody there,” Jones said last week.
The White House denied any offer had been made, leaving Jones insisting his comments had been taken out of context and would soon be naming someone to be his D.C. reporter.
the “Swift Boat” theories. In his long career, most of it with the World Net Daily, Corsi also has played a prominent role promoting claims that President Barack Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii was faked in order to cover up his foreign birth, popularly known as the “Birther” conspiracy theories.
Not only did Jones feverishly promote those claims, but Donald Trump as early as 2011 consulted Corsi and WND editor Joseph Farah while entertaining his own interest in the birther conspiracy theory.
Over the years, Corsi has been prolific in promoting a variety of far-right extremist claims, many of them based in John Birch Society-style Red-baiting. These include an “expose” on the so-called “North American Union,” a dominant antigovernment conspiracy theory described as a plot to surrender American sovereignty in a planned merger with Canada and Mexico, as well as his book and reporting for WND that Obama planned to intern Americans in concentration camps. White nationalist radio host James Edwards also claimed to have helped Corsi with his birther reporting.
After writing Unfit for Command, Corsi’s “Swift Boat book,” he went on to co-author a book with Jim Gilchrist, one of the co-founders of the nativist border-vigilante Minuteman movement. One chapter of that book was devoted to extolling the virtues of then-Orange County, Calif., Sheriff Mike Carona, who called himself “America’s Sheriff” until he resigned amid allegations he tampered with a jury.
Eric Hananoki at Media Matters observed:
Letting Infowars into the White House would provide the Trump administration an ally -- if a volatile one -- in the press room, one it could count on not to push stories damaging to the president. Jones himself has indicated that this is part of the plan, saying yesterday that “just by being there” in the White House they would be able to move news organizations that publish mainstream news stories “out of the way."