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John Oliver Takes Down Alex Jones On 'Last Week…

by Kathleen Walsh

A lot has happened in the past few weeks that John Oliver has been away from HBO. Oliver went over the ban of transgender people from the military, a possible war with North Korea, the much contested health care bill, and of course White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, all before his main story of the night. John Oliver takes down Alex Jones on Last Week Tonight and the internet is here for it.

Jones is probably most famous for his absurd and disgusting contention that the Sandy Hook massacre was fake, and the traumatized children were actors. Obviously, President Donald Trump is a big fan of Jones. After a quick recap of all the insane things that happened in the government while Last Week Tonight was on hiatus, Oliver went in on Jones for all of the completely insane things that he says on a regular basis, with particular emphasis on the mostly useless and highly overpriced products he hawks on his show every day. Oliver's Twitter fans absolutely loved it. And so did I, if I'm completely honest, because Jones should not be allowed a platform this large. Even Trump seems to agree that media plays a huge role in public opinion, and the kind of media Jones peddles is nothing but trouble.

Jones is the face and smoker's rattle of a website, show, and radio program called InfoWars, which is basically Breitbart without the measured and intelligent editing and fact-checking. Oliver opened the segment with a now-famous clip of Jones railing against impure water, claiming that the chemicals within were turning frogs gay. Later, Oliver showed how this claim led directly to Jones selling various overpriced water purifiers. In fact, according to the segment, it appears Jones' entire show is based around selling things at extremely high prices, including a diet supplement called Caveman, that Oliver described as "chocolate and domesticated bird corpses," adding that "it comes at you in waves."

Oliver also pointed out Jones' three different Rolex watches. On their own, there is nothing wrong with owning fancy watches. But as Oliver points out, Jones consistently defends his constant plugging by saying the show is making no profit, and he needs to sell these items to keep himself solvent. If that were indeed the case, then how on Earth does he afford three different $8,000 watches?

Frankly, I did not need the watches to convince me that Alex Jones is nothing but a fraud pandering to the basest instincts of humanity and capitalizing on every conspiracy he can think of. He's done that himself.