“The Onion” CEO Ben Collins and Everytown For Gun Safety President John Feinblatt joined ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America” for a sit-down interview on Friday, where he claimed to “own” Infowars and tripped over his words while falsely alleging his group offered the highest bid.
Explaining they thought purchasing Infowars in a bankruptcy auction would be “the funniest joke of all time,” Collins claimed Infowars’ “garbage” content has “hurt a lot of people” in the past couple of decades.
Feinblatt chimed in next, saying the Sandy Hook families who were awarded $1.5 billion in a defamation case against Jones “were behind” the alleged purchase of Infowars.
Stephanopoulos brought up the fact that US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez, who is presiding over the bankruptcy case, halted the sale of the company on Thursday due to frustrations about the process of the so-called auction.
The judge said, “No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.”
Responding to the ABC News reporter, Collins said, “Yeah, look. We won the bid. We own Infowars and we are very excited about that.”
Cutting the Onion CEO off, Stephanopoulos asked, “But, is it true that you didn’t have the highest bid?”
Stumbling over his words, Collins answered, “Uhh, we, we did. We did have the highest bid when you take into account the families’ concessions here. They made a concerted effort to make this the best and highest bid for everybody involved…”
Asking if they believe turning Infowars into an anti-gun satire website is “the best way to stop Alex Jones,” Collins said, “Absolutely. I used to be a disinformation reporter. I used to cover him from the other side of this. You can present as many facts as you want to Alex Jones and he’s just not gonna listen. But, if you make fun of these people in a way that cuts through and maybe show a funhouse mirror, basically, to what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to get you really afraid so you can buy some supplements…”
“He spread his funds out all over the place,” Stephanopoulos said next, asking, “Is there any real way to stop him?”
Collins responded, “You can try. It’s not worth giving up, in my opinion… There’s some hope in this. It’s felt pretty hopeless in the last couple of months recently for a lot of people, and we wanted to say, ‘Actually good things can happen. There can be a good fight to win and that’s why we wanted to be here.’”
Feinblatt called it “karmic justice” that his anti-gun group would be involved in the alleged purchase of Infowars.
Hellbound and Down 