The Onion CEO on plans to take over Infowars

[0:00] Well they're known for joking around but now The Onion is getting downright serious. The legendary satirical newspaper has a new plan to take over Infowars the right wing platform founded by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. That acquisition still needing a judge's approval but the parent company of Infowars is facing liquidation over more than one billion dollars in defamation judgments owed to relatives of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. [0:28] This isn't the first time The Onion tried to acquire Infowars. A bankruptcy judge threw out the paper's first takeover bid but under the new plan The Onion would license Infowars from its court appointed manager for at least six months. I'm joined now by Ben Collins the CEO of The Onion. Ben good to see you. Good to see you too. Well Alex Jones as you know responding to your latest move in a shirtless rant. Let's take a listen and get your reaction. You can't take something over and then act like you're somebody even if you [1:00] say it's a parody. You can do a parody of somebody but none of you took something from them. You've already checked with lawyers so they're in deep ****. I'm already suing the Democrat Party law firms. Already got civil rights lawsuits. So you think look just because you're wearing my shirt don't mean you're me. So let's be 100% clear about that. And so you guys just keep laughing. [1:21] Besides needing to hit the gym what do you make of his response? [1:24] Well it looks great. Second of all I didn't take his shirt. I got this at TJ Maxx. It's a completely different thing. Yeah I also didn't know that was an option. You can just show up shirtless on television. [1:37] Look I understand he's going through a lot but he you know he to be serious for a second he defamed these families for 10 years. He said that their kids didn't actually exist. You know he drove a bunch of Infowars correspondents at the Sandy Hook to harangue the families for years. [1:55] It's awful what he did. And he has to this day not paid a cent to these families. We're just trying to get them some cash. We're going to send them some merch cash that we've already sold since the announcement yesterday. We're confident that the new version of Infowars while we'll probably have a little bit more shirt based people on there you know people wearing actual attire will be a better website than the one that's currently running. [2:24] Well clearly TJ Maxx is now going to want to sponsor the show. You wear it well. Let's talk about your plans for the site. OK because you've got comedian Tim Heidegger set to take over. Let's take a look at how Alex Jones was mocked by the comedian who just stole his job for a second. [2:42] Hey everybody I got some breaking news for you. It's looking very likely that Global Tetrahedon will seize control of Infowars in the coming days. The folks at Global Tetrahedon have asked me to step in as to run the show over there and become a big part of the future. [3:00] So we're exploring. Sorry. My name is Tim Heidegger. I'm just here to let you know that I am now in charge of Infowars. [3:11] OK. He's funny. No doubt. But I do want to ask you that how can a comedian take Infowars you know known for being this vessel of hatred and ridiculous conspiracies and use it to address issues. [3:25] You know Ben as serious as gun violence. Yeah of course. I mean first of all he'll do it very carefully. He's done this. He's done this before. He has a Joe Rogan parody that goes on for 14 hours on YouTube but doesn't actually say anything. [3:40] He's a very deft and skilled guy. But look we live in a world that is consumed by graphs and people telling you that you're one enema away from solving all of your problems. [3:53] Alex Jones kind of lived in that thing too. He got you really afraid of you know the fluoride in the water and all these other things and then he would sell you a solution. [4:03] We're not trying to sell you a solution to anything except you can learn to float on the new Infowars. [4:09] We're not trying to sell you a solution to anything. We're just trying to sell you a newspaper which is right here. [4:14] And look if we're going to scare you we're going to do it to make it at the end of the day so you laugh at it. [4:22] That's the difference. And I think like what we need as a society right now we need people to be a little bit less afraid and a little bit less petrified of their neighbor. [4:32] Instead we're going to make people laugh instead. [4:36] Well I worry about my producer Josh because he usually sends me some sort of clip from The Onion before he even sends me something from ABC News. [4:44] So there you go. You've got the smartest people in the biz loving you first Ben. [4:48] And I just outed him and he's going to be very upset with me. [4:51] OK good. He's laughing in the control room. Thank goodness. [4:53] But we do love you Ben for full disclosure. We mentioned the defamation judgments owed to the relatives of the Sandy Hook you know school shooting victims. [5:03] Is The Onion you know working with these families in this moment as this Infowars takeover is happening. [5:12] You know how involved are they. Yeah. The very first thing we did when we originally bid on this is called the family. [5:19] We didn't want to do a big bid around this without their permission necessarily. So that's really helpful. [5:26] And I think you know we're going to send a cut of merch to them no matter what happens. [5:32] But our ultimate goal is to buy this outright. And when we do all that money will go to families. [5:38] Like I said at present they've gotten zero dollars. A lot of lawyers have made a lot of money over the last eight years. [5:45] It's been eight years and three days since these families have filed this lawsuit. [5:51] But they still not received any compensatory damages. We would like to get that to them at some point. [5:56] And they've been really supportive. Another thing that's really it's important to note this. [6:00] They went through a horrific tragedy and then a guy you know jumped on them for years trying to exploit it. [6:07] But they're human beings and they like to laugh and they think better a better country is possible if we laugh at stuff. [6:14] And they have been fully behind this since the word go. And we're really appreciative of them. [6:19] Hey we all know the world needs more laughter especially right now. And you know and to the serious. [6:25] You know it clearly your love for satire. But previously you were a reporter covering dis and misinformation for years. [6:34] Now you're literally running a fake news company and about to run another. How do you how do you kind of how do you reconcile that. [6:42] You know just especially amid all these fears that misinformation is eroding our democracy. [6:48] Yeah look we got away with having the onions is 38 years old. We got away with making fun of stuff for a long time without it becoming a horrible national security crisis. [7:00] Really the thing that changed is people lying about stuff on purpose to sell stuff and to you know re victimize victims of tragedies. [7:09] And I that's not the business we're in. We're a completely different business. We're in the business of making people laugh over stupid stuff. We're going to keep doing that. [7:18] You know I I think we're uniquely positioned to take over Infowars not just because of me but because of you know the these guys are pros. [7:27] Our editor-in-chief has been here for 30 plus years. Like these guys know exactly how to handle this moment. We've grown since all this garbage has happened. [7:36] And we've grown it away where people really like it. So just buy some puro oxygen capsules which we just saw on the thing. And we'll keep going. [7:44] Learn to float baby. Learn to float. Well we we love the onion and this this new takeover what you know what you're doing. It's pretty incredible. [7:56] And I think it will help a lot of people heal. We definitely need more humor which is why we always turn to the onion on so many occasions. [8:04] Ben Collins appreciate you Ben. Well thank you so much for having me.