Alex Jones Still Has Shooters
Shocker: it's Duncan Trussell and Kurt Metzger.
There is a relatively new show called Mystery Boys on the Your Mom’s House podcast network, which is owned by divorcees Tom Segura and Christina Pazsitzky. Mystery Boys is hosted by Duncan Trussell and Kurt Metzger, whom you may know from the Netflix show The Midnight Gospel and an unhinged Facebook post defending an alleged rapist, respectively. They describe their new show with the tagline “This is not a conspiracy podcast. This is a mystery appreciation podcast,” which is a creative way of saying they believe all the conspiracy theories they talk about. It would be laborious to walk you through the specifics, but suffice it to say they are deeply concerned with Freemasonry, the Knights Templar, Baphomet and the Anunnaki, lizard people, Mithraism, and CIA mind control technology. You get the idea.
This week, Trussell and Metzger sat down with the disgraced conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. In years past this was the sort of thing that might cause a minor controversy, as when Andrew Schulz had Jones on his podcast in an episode that was removed from YouTube (and later reposted), but in these modern times it passes without notice. That’s comedy for you.
The episode is mostly raving nonsense: they discuss the Rothschilds, shape-shifters, UFOs, organ harvesting, yada yada. It’s not exactly news that a pair of has-been comedians on a podcast network owned by fans of Candace Owens and Andrew Tate are off their gourds. At the same time, I think it’s worth observing that there are comedians out there who remain sympathetic to Alex Jones, even eager to spread his ideas. They devote a significant portion of the episode to The Onion’s acquisition of the InfoWars brand, which Jones erroneously claims was orchestrated by the gun safety group Everytown and billionaire Michael Bloomberg. (It’s true that Bloomberg co-founded and financially backs Everytown, but Everytown did not contribute to the purchase; rather, it agreed to come aboard as an exclusive advertiser on the rebranded InfoWars.) Naturally, Trussell and Metzger credulously eat up Jones’s assertions that Everytown and Bloomberg now “own” The Onion, as well as his complaints that new InfoWars host Tim Heidecker, Vic Berger, and Onion CEO Ben Collins are censoring him and stealing his identity. (Metzger: “Fun fact about Collins: that’s a converso name. It means Cohen.”)
Then this happens:
Trussell: I want to say this. All of you people who have been sucked into this—
Metzger: What?
Trussell: The comedians who've been sucked into it.
Metzger: Well, they don't read and they don't—
Trussell: No, but they should know how much danger they're in. And I don't just mean like—you've gotten—
Metzger: Are you gonna be all Christian now?
Trussell: No, no, no, no. You've gotten tangled up in something real bad. And I don't just mean that. I mean, dude, guillotines were invented for a fucking reason, man. If you're truly traitorous, treasonous, if you're really getting sucked into a fucking thing that is against freedom of speech, that is designed to psychologically abuse and torment people—
Jones: And steal people's identities.
Trussell: And steal people's fucking identities—
Jones: By the way, they don't just steal it. They then become you and do bad shit in your name.
Trussell: Dude, Jean-Paul Sartre, "Whatever you do, you give the world permission to do." So by doing these things -
Metzger: Did he say that?
Trussell: Yes!
Metzger: I always hated that guy.
Trussell: By doing these fucking things, you've given the world permission to do that to you. You've given everyone permission to do that to you because you did it. And why would you put yourself in that fucking place? I gotta take a shit, I'm so sorry.
Jones: I understand. Take a shit.
Metzger: Oh, yeah. Go ahead and shit, buddy.
As crazy as it is, the transcript of this segment doesn’t actually do it justice. Trussell and Metzger typically wear outlandish costumes when they record: in this episode, Trussell is wearing some sort of pita bread (or hot dog?) costume and a blue wig, while Metzger has on a blonde wig and a conical hat.
In other words, Trussell, a 52-year-old man, looks like this as he delivers an impassioned monologue calling Tim Heidecker a traitor risking the guillotine:
Once, many years ago, a time so far gone it feels like another world, you might have watched a video like this and defaulted to the assumption that the comedian was doing a bit. Today, the safer assumption is that they’re not, and that they really have lost touch with any semblance of reality.
Here's another way of looking at it. As Alex Jones has been beaten back into the fringes of political discourse, today’s class of comedy-podcasters—not just Trussell and Metzger but also Joe Rogan, Tim Dillon, Andrew Schulz, Yannis Pappas and Chris Distefano, and Shane Gillis and Matt McCusker—have pushed the boundaries of their own art form to make room for Jones’s ideas. It’s been a long effort and a successful one. All it’s cost them is their sanity.
Seth Simons
"I Go Where the Bag Is, Dude"
Last week I told you about Chris D’Elia’s apparent booking on Turning Point USA’s upcoming college tour. Well, this week he took to his podcast to explain that it was all a big mixup:
D'Elia: So I haven't done work in Hollywood for six years, it's been—and I get an offer from Turning Point USA, which to do—well, first of all, I don't really know what the offer is. They say, "Hey, you want to do comedy for our show?" And I go, "Yeah, I love doing comedy. Let me put you in touch with my manager." I put 'em in touch with my manager and then I was like, "What do they want me to do?" And he said, "They want you to do 20 minutes of comedy. You can roast them, whatever." I was like, "Oh yeah, maybe I'll do that."
And one thing led to another to where my manager let them think yes, I was going to do it. And then it was posted that I was going to do it. And when it was posted, it was posted that it was gonna be, like, Donald Trump Jr was gonna be on the thing and all that. And I go, "Oh, what is this?" And I look at it and I was like, "Yo, I didn't even look at the contract yet." So it was a mixup that I was posted on this. And when I tell you people were coming for my head, I mean, they're like. First of all, there was no, "Hey, what's this all about?" It was only "Die, bitch."
"In the back of my head, I was like, "Dude, you know what? Hollywood really is a bitch and they're shitty. And everyone shamed me out of Hollywood."
And I'm like, "Well, okay, hold on." First of all, the people trying to—and by the way, I know people are coming at Turning Point too because they're like, "You put him on the site prematurely, you shouldn't have done that." Just fucking shut up, dude. This was a simple, simple mistake, dude. And it's nobody's fault except probably my manager's. Okay? So you know what? I take responsibility actually, because I should have just—I'm so fucking goddamn aloof, dude. I just go, "What? I don't know. Maybe. Yeah, sounds fun. I want to make everybody happy." And then it gets announced that I'm gonna do 20 minutes of fucking roasting, I guess, in Reno. And I'm like, "Well, I don't want to do that." And then it's already up and out. And I go, "Why the fuck?" I say to my manager, "What the fuck?" And he's like," Oh, my bad."
And I'm like, "All right, cool." And now everyone's like, "Fuck you, bro. You're the lowest of low. You're the scum of the earth. You're terrible." I got people telling me you're complicit in war crimes. I'm like, "Oh my God." Now granted, these people are mentally insane, but there are different levels of mentally insane that they are. There are the very batshit crazy people. That's fine. And do those people still get to you? Yeah, if there's enough of them. But then there are people who are kind of insane and they're like, "Look at you, you sell out." They offered me a lot of money. And I'm like, "Oh." In the beginning, that's what I saw. And I was like, "Oh, maybe I'll do the fucking shit. I'm not political. I just go off fucking roasting people. I don't give a shit." And in the back of my head, I was like, "Dude, you know what? Hollywood really is a bitch and they're shitty. And everyone shamed me out of Hollywood." So I'm like, "All right, I don't make money off that. So fuck it. Maybe I'll make money off this other thing."
"I'm knocking the people who were the head of the MeToo movement and then went to Saudi Arabia and fucking went to do those shows."
Because I go where the bag is, dude. Do you understand that? Do you understand that? Do you understand that, dude, I will go where the bag is? I am not political. Dude, if you had me, remember when I was making fun of all those comics that went to Saudi Arabia? By the way, where the fuck happened to them? Nobody gives a shit about that. They still go to their shows. And I'm not knocking all of the comics. I'm knocking the people who were the head of the MeToo movement and then went to Saudi Arabia and fucking went to do those shows. Y'all could go fuck yourself. Okay? I don't give a fuck. I don't talk about this shit. Everything's a joke. I don't stand for fucking free this, free that. Oh, this is a disgrace. Vote for this person, don't vote for that person. I'll go to Saudi Arabia. You know what I'm saying? Now, so I don't care. I would do a show for Barack Obama. I would do a show for fucking Hillary Clinton, JD Vance. I don't give a fuck, dude. Bags, 'kay?
The monologue is full of contradictions, none as rich as the contradiction of Chris D’Elia himself—a man desperate to capitalize off of his image as a Hollywood outcast, but who just can’t bring himself to articulate what he was cast out for. I’d almost feel sorry for him if not for the, well, you know.
Seth Simons
