The Most Unhinged Moments from Alex Jones’ Custody Battle

Trump’s go-to conspiracy theorist is on trial—and it’s just as wild as you’d imagine.

Tamir Kalifa/Austin American-Statesman

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A rare and at times unhinged portrait of President Trump’s favorite conspiracy theorist, Infowars host Alex Jones, is emerging in an Austin court this week, as the radio star seeks to retain custody of his three children from ex-wife, Kelly Jones.

Lawyers for the bombastic broadcaster are attempting to persuade the jury that he is merely a “performance artist”, someone who should be separated from the outrageous character he plays on-air. His ex-wife is arguing the opposite: Jones in private is the same person at home and with their children that he presents to his millions of conspiracy-hungry viewers, including Trump.

Here are some of the high-lights (or low-lights, depending on your view) coming out of Austin, Texas, where the two-week trial is taking place:

1. Jones claims chili affects his memory, and thus was the culprit behind him forgetting details about his young children.

2. Marijuana is too strong these days because of billionaire financier George Soros.

3. Jones can allegedly be found frequently drunk and shirtless.

4. He’s still bitter that his 9/11 truther theories never garnered a Pulitzer award.

5. Jones was formally diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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