You know Alex Jones, right? He's the leading right-wing conspiracy nut and internet grifter who has been broadcasting live from the fever swamps for two decades and is currently being sued by the families of school shooting victims because he has claimed for years that they faked the deaths of elementary school children. Through his website, InfoWars, Jones has also amplified conspiracy theories that 9/11 was an inside job and that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya — the latter of which was also famously touted by our current president. He also pushed the so-called #QAnon conspiracy theory, which posits that President Donald Trump and special counsel Robert Mueller are actually working together to flush out a global child sex ring run by prominent Democrats.
Jones and InfoWars were recently banned or significantly restricted by platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Spotify because of the way Jones foments abuse and spreads false information online.
That guy.
Well, turns out that on his July 3, 2012, broadcast, Jones had a member of Congress on his show to discuss the Transportation Security Administration and the mission creep and overreach on their part that had him seeing tyranny. That member of congress was Tennessee's U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who is currently running for U.S. Senate.
You can no longer access the episode via InfoWars on YouTube because of the ban, but some Jones fan has uploaded the whole thing. You can watch it, starting at the Blackburn segment, below.
%{[ data-embed-type="oembed" data-embed-id="https://youtu.be/R8pmlegIez8?t=3895" data-embed-element="aside">To get an idea of the sort of show Blackburn is participating in here, we went ahead and listened to it. You're welcome. In the show's first hour, Jones teases his upcoming conversation with Blackburn, combining his concerns about the TSA with fears about Agenda 21 — another favorite right-wing conspiracy theory surrounding a United Nations sustainability initiative. He sounds the alarm about the "Green Police," who he says will, well, do this: “come to your house and say, ‘We’re coming in,’ and they’re armed. No judge, no jury, they’re coming in to do an inspection, they’re coming in to forcibly inoculate, they’re coming in to cut down your garden in your backyard in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that you’ve had for 20 years, and then charge you for it. No law, they just do it.”
That bit about a garden in Tulsa appears to be a reference to the story of this woman who lost her garden to overzealous codes enforcement — not an international police force enacting one world government in the name of sustainability.
At other points in the bellowing rant, Jones makes reference to the "banker-occupied media" and the "banker-occupied government." Discussing the debate over the Affordable Care Act, he calls then-Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and liberals in general, "evil."
“Have you ever been around one of these fake liberal authoritarians?" Jones growls. "Especially the women. They hate men, they hate children, they drug their sons, they hate even their daughters.”
Those sorts of people are the enemy, he says, and they must be “crushed” and “annihilated.”
Next up: Marsha Blackburn!
Blackburn was promoting a bill she'd introduced called the "STRIP Act," which would have prohibited TSA employees from wearing police-style uniforms and badges. The paper was essentially aimed at the TSA's role in security theater at the airport, which is, indeed, ridiculous.
“It is outrageous that in a post-9/11 world that the American people should have to live in fear of those whose job it is to keep us safe," Blackburn said at the time. "Congress has sat idly by as the TSA strip-searches 85-year-old grandmothers in New York, pats down 3-year-olds in Chattanooga, and checks colostomy bags for explosives in Orlando. Enough is enough! The least we can do is end this impersonation, which is an insult to real cops."
At first, Blackburn is explaining all this to Jones in relatively reasonable terms. Until Jones, wide-eyed and gesturing dramatically, starts steering the conversation into the ditch. And Blackburn goes there with him, tacitly endorsing his increasingly wild statements and legitimizing him as a broadcaster. Here's a partial transcript of their conversation. And as you read, it's worth keeping in mind the similarities between this exchange and Blackburn's relationship with Trump — she seems happy to tolerate, and even validate, the muck that figures like Jones and Trump dredge up.
Jones: What about the mission creep or mission gallup where right here where I live in Texas, I’m in Austin, but in Dallas — I told people this a year ago they didn’t believe it, but it’s finally in the newspaper, I have family that saw it — but now in Houston, they set up warrantless checkpoints on the highways and roads, bus stations, train terminals, and they go on busses and they pull cars over. You know, in Tennessee two years ago TSA ‘inspectors,’ the viper teams were out there, and they were commanding a military and local police and state police with highway checkpoints. So what’s happened in your state, what about jurisdiction? Even if they were federal officers, since when are they running around out of their jurisdiction? So you got fake officers out of their jurisdiction.Blackburn: That’s right. The TSA officers have no authority to arrest anybody. If they have a problem at all, they have to do what you and I do and call the police. And these are called VIPR Teams, that you’re referencing. V-I-P-R. They’re the intermodal preparedness response teams. Now, these teams, as you said, have been on our highways. What we are trying to do is to return them to the airport to assist the traveling public as they go through the airport. The STRIP Act does that. Because, let me tell you something — there is no business, the TSA has no business being on our city busses, our subways, our trains, our highways. You know, when the FBI or the CIA gets a tip and they’re going to go about trying to stop a terrorist attack or to interdict some kind of situation, they are working on actionable intelligence. The TSA just does their searches randomly. They can pull over anybody, they can stop anybody, they can randomly search anybody.
Jones: “Because they say so.
Blackburn: That’s right.”
Jones: Just like they made themselves officers. I mean, Congress had to create the FBI, they had to go through an approval process, the states had to be created, they have constitutions under city and county charters they’re able, under the law, to hire people that are trained in the constitution, due-process-bonded, and then now they just announce themselves God. Look, the only reason I raise this parallel — and I know there’s some good people that work there, but that’s like saying there’s some good people in Nazi Germany — Hitler just created the Brown Shirts as well. Stalin did the same thing. All authoritarian systems seek to create a new type of goon force outside of the original military and police training system, and that’s exactly what I see, Congresswoman, happening here.
Blackburn: Well it has been of such concern to us, and that is why we continue to go after it. The TSA has no business doing anything but working as airport security screeners in our nation’s airports and assisting the traveling public in that regard. And our goal is to get them out of these uniforms, get them out of these shirts, to get them out of these badges and to return them to doing that simple task of assistance. We are incredibly concerned with this overreach and this mission creep and the unionization and lack of regard for the traveling public. It’s time to put a halt to it, my legislation is the very first step in getting that done.
Jones: Yes, ma'am. We’ve only got about eight minutes left with you, again you’ve been gracious to give us this much time. We just want to commend you, and we know Tennessee is proud to have somebody up there that will actually stand up for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. That is such a rarity these days. I mean, think of how far the TSA has already gone. Now I’m sure you know that first they were like, "We’re going to make dock workers go through us to get a job, and then now we’re going to make" — I’m sure you saw in New Mexico last year, a judge ruled the TSA had to train the public schools on their security. So it’s OK if they come train you, now you can violate people’s rights and put your hand down somebody’s pants. William Shatner had his pants pulled down last week. I am afraid to fly with my wife and children just because my daughters and my son have been taught don’t let somebody touch you, but they’ve had top psychologists come out and say this is training children so that people like Jerry Sandusky can have their way with them. How do I teach my children "stranger danger." Don’t let somebody touch you, but now except these people?
Blackburn: Well this is one of the reasons we want to put a stop to this. You know, the TSA, bear in mind, the TSA has not captured one terrorist. They have not led to the arrest or capture of one terrorist. And this overreach, all of these machinations that they’re going through at the airport, this is all so uncalled for. So, you know, we do appreciate the help of people who are going to work to get this reined back in. It’s just something that we’ve got to do, it’s a step we’ve got to take before this gets any further out of control.
Jones: You’re right. I want to get into some of the lying here, because you’re up on all of this but for some of the new listeners. They said three years ago, "We’re not groping children," even though we’ve got hundreds of videos of them even pulling children’s pants off and their shirts off, 2-, 3-year-olds, taking babies' diapers off. Then it happened to one of my employees, the Drudge Report linked to it, and then it ended up being a national story that became the biggest story in the country for about three months. As the TSA started saying we don’t do that, then they said, "Well now we’re going to stop under 12." Courthouses were doing it in Colorado and Florida until people pointed out it was illegal to do that to under-18-year-olds, so they had to stop. They also had the naked body scanners going in that it’s been shown violate federal law here but also in England. So it’s all part of this lawless power grab, but then this year they were stripping down women — 85-, 90-year-old, 95-year-old women — taking them behind closed doors, making old people get out of wheelchairs that can’t even walk, making other people help them, screaming at old people, it happened to my grandmother who’s almost 90, flying back from a wedding, screaming at her to move quicker, on crutches. I mean, it’s like our induction into a prison or something, slave training. But what about holding them accountable for the $40 billion that they estimate we lose a year in tourism, the state department’s having to run TV ads in Europe saying, "Come here, we’re not a police state." Well, yes we are. I mean, I’m ranting here, basically, throwing ourselves on the mercy of Congress. But what about the lying? What about the culture of saying "We don’t strip search old ladies" and then being caught, or "We don’t strip search children" or "There’s no radiation from the scanners," then they get caught lying. How did the culture of this get so villainous?
Blackburn: You know, I wish I had an answer for you. I don’t know. But I had a constituent yesterday that I thought summed it up pretty well. I was doing a listening session, and they came up to me after it was over, and they said, "Marsha, I just got to tell you." They said: "I feel like we’re looking at a time when it is government run amok. When it is government run wild." And they talked about the TSA videos and the judicial conferences that are in elaborate locations, and they said, "You know, I just want to see some government restraint." And another constituent had said, "When is Congress going to put some mandates on these bureaucracies and agencies and require them to comply with the law and to act in a responsible manner under the law?" And I thought, you know, that’s a pretty good question. And it’s a pretty good way of summing it up. And I think it is distressing to individuals to see their government and employees of the federal government conduct themselves in the manner that some, not all, but some of these TSA agents who probably if a thorough background check were done, would not have been hired in the first place. I think it is just so demeaning to individuals to be treated in such a disrespectful manner by some of the TSA agents who raise their voices, who bark out orders, who act as if they’re the authority because they’re wearing a uniform and a badge. And with my children and grandchildren, I want them to understand that when someone has worked hard and wears a uniform, whether it’s one of our men and women in the military, whether it’s a policeman, a fireman, a highway patrolman, that I want them to show appropriate respect for that individual. And, you know, when they are treated so disrespectfully by a TSA agent who should not be wearing that uniform in the first place, it gets to be pretty difficult to make that argument. So, we’re just going to keep plugging away at trying to move this legislation forward, build support for it on a bipartisan basis and hopefully be able to return them working in the airport, in a work shirt and trousers with the patch and look at our traveling public and say, "We are here to serve you, how may we assist?"
After letting her go, Jones remarks: “Man, that was a good interview, I like her.”
To find Blackburn playing footsie with far-right conspiracists, then or now, is not all that surprising. In 2009, despite saying she believed that Obama was "legitimately elected," Blackburn signed on to a bill requiring presidential candidates to show their birth certificates to prove their citizenship.
