President Obama Sniffs His Hand at a Campaign Rally to Prove He’s Not Demonically Possessed

But did he smell sulfur? Ask Alex Jones.

<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/30192882505/">The White House</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On Monday, conspiracy radio host Alex Jones made a major announcement: White House sources had informed him that Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama are “abject, psychopathic” demons “from Hell.”

Jones has hosted Donald Trump on his radio show, InfoWars, and quickly emerged as one of the Republican nominee’s leading boosters in conservative media. So at a rally Tuesday in Greensboro, North Carolina, Obama decided to respond. “I was reading the other day, there’s a guy on the radio who apparently, Trump’s on his show frequently, he said me and Hillary are demons. Said we smell like sulfur. Ain’t that something!”

Obama then paused to smell his own hand.

“Now, I mean, come on, people!” he said.

Trump only appeared on Jones’ show once, but both men have close relationships with conservative dirty trickster Roger Stone, a Nixon campaign vet who serves as an informal Trump adviser and a frequent InfoWars guest.

Jones, in case you’re unfamiiar with him, is a 9/11 Truther who claims the Sandy Hook massacre never happened. He has been critical of past Republican candidates, but he can’t get enough of The Donald. Jones also helped to popularize the “Hillary for Prison” t-shirts that are now ubiquitous at conservative rallies, and his show is an incubator for some of Trump’s wildest accusations—including the claim that the November election will be “rigged.”

“It is surreal,” Jones commented on his program in August, “to talk about issues here on air, and then word-for-word hear Trump say it two days later.”

But maybe Jones had a point. If Obama’s not the devil, how does the president explain this?

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate