'The Truth vs. Alex Jones' review: HBO doc captures the lying blowhard's real, craven self
Alex Jones speaks to the media during his 2022 trial in a lawsuit brought by the families of children killed at Sandy Hook, alleging he caused them harm by claiming the massacre was staged.
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The HBO documentary feature film “The Truth vs. Alex Jones” is a scathing and well-deserved takedown of the abhorrent hatemonger and huckster whose name is in the title, but the bleating talk show host isn’t the only villain in this story.
What about the hundreds upon hundreds of gullible and obtuse and in some cases hateful trolls who bought into the conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook Elementary mass shooting and proceeded to harass the grieving families, online and, in some cases, in person? What kind of human being talks about digging up children’s graves to “prove” Sandy Hook was staged, claims to have urinated on graves, or threatens to rape and kill the parents of those kids?
Then there’s one Kelley Watt, a Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist who says, “I’m as firm in my belief that [Sandy Hook] didn’t happen as [Sandy Hook parent] Lenny Pozner is … convinced that he had a son who passed away. … This is so insane. I just can’t believe that anybody believes it.”
Oh, but before we dismiss Watt as some kind of ignorant and grotesquely cruel kook, she advocates for exhuming the bodies of the victims she doesn’t believe exists and lists her bona fides: “I watch a lot of true crime, and they exhume bodies all the time.”
Un. Believable. Then again, a poll cited in one of the civil trials against Jones says that 24% of Americans believe some mass shootings are either definitely or possibly staged.
“The Truth vs. Alex Jones” director Dan Reed, who has previously tackled controversial matters in compelling fashion in documentaries such as “Leaving Neverland” and “Four Hours at the Capitol,” spent four years filming interviews with parents of Sandy Hook victims, who speak with admirable bravery and heartbreaking passion about the horrors of losing a child — and the years of pain they’ve endured because Jones and others have mocked their grief, have questioned whether the shootings ever happened, have accused them of being crisis actors. We hear from the parents of a number of children who were killed on Friday, Dec. 12, 2012, and we hear how many of them were stunned when they were called liars who were part of a vast and wide-ranging conspiracy.
Robbie Parker in particular was targeted for vicious criticism by Jones after Parker issued a statement on the evening after the shootings and was seen smiling awkwardly before addressing the media. “I was just kind of confused and nervous and kind of gave this laugh like, ‘I don’t know what to do here,’ ” recalls Parker.
That brief clip was mocked by Jones, who told his audience of millions, “He walks up like he’s an actor, then breaks down on camera. … He does it like a soap opera actor.” By then, Jones had already called the entire tragedy into question; just two hours after the news broke, he was on the air, declaring, “This is staged. And you know I’ve been saying for the last few months, get ready for big mass shootings.”
Jones also gave a platform to the likes of Wolfgang Habib, who said “nobody died” at Sandy Hook and cited the fact that no trauma helicopters ever arrived on the scene as evidence.
Says Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan was killed in the shooting, “They didn’t seem to accept logic. … Why weren’t people airlifted to emergency rooms? Well, because they were all dead.”
The documentary takes us inside courtrooms in Texas and Connecticut and the trials against Jones, who was found liable for some $1.5 billion in damages. Whether Jones is at the defense table or on the stand or commenting on the trials on his show, he consistently comes across as craven, petulant, disingenuous, equivocating, self-aggrandizing and despicable.
Jones has yet to pay the victims’ families — negotiations for payments remain ongoing — and he remains podcasting, spinning his views and urging his legions of loyal followers to buy products and supplements such as “Nitric Boost” and “Brain Force Ultra” and “Ageless Vitality Collagen,” as well as “preparedness items" such as a six-month supply of “long-term storable food” for just $1,397.
In the final moments of “The Truth vs. Alex Jones,” we see the graves of Noah Samuel Posner (Nov. 20, 2006-Dec. 14, 2012) and Jesse McCord Lewis (June 30, 2006-Dec. 14, 2012), and we’re reminded of just how short their time was — and how their families’ suffering was compounded by the evil of conspiracy theorists.
And we know that if you showed this documentary to many who still believe Sandy Hook was a hoax, they’d shrug it off as merely another part of the plan to deceive us.