Forget the sexist dog whistle. Alex Jones has put up a neon sign.
The Infowars founder is trying to discredit Megyn Kelly ahead of the Sunday airing of his interview with NBC's new star, and his strategy is not even remotely subtle.
“I was talking to her about five minutes, and she was coming on to me so hard,” Jones claimed on his talk show Thursday, describing a phone call in which Kelly pitched the interview. “I thought, 'This is a setup. I gotta record it.' … She was just — it was so over-the-top fake. Just how, oh, I'm so amazing and, oh, she can't wait to meet me. Like, and I kept saying, 'Lady, you hate me. I'm not stupid. If you want to do the piece, fine. Stop acting like you're turned on by me.'”
Jones says he recorded all of his conversations with Kelly, including the interview, and will post the recordings online to counter the way he assumes he will be portrayed on NBC. Jones, who maintains that "9/11 was an inside job,” wants his audience of fellow conspiracy theorists to believe that NBC is out to destroy him because he speaks the truth.
“They're misrepresenting who I am and saying I'm as bad as Saddam Hussein,” he said in an online video Thursday.
Jones also wants to convince his base that Kelly practices seduction, not journalism.
“God, she was like, 'I wanna get steaks with you. I'm obsessed with you. Oh my God,'” Jones said on his show.
“People need to know what this woman's like, what a viper she is,” added Roger Stone, the former Donald Trump campaign adviser who frequently joins Jones's program. “I had one of the top woman commentators at Fox tell me to my face, 'This woman is a dangerous, dangerous, vicious, unprincipled climber.'”
“You're the guy who had the courage to get in the arena with this witch,” Stone continued. “Roger Ailes makes her career at Fox; she knifes him in the back with a completely false claim of sexual harassment.”
Jones has been building to this line of attack since the day he announced that he would sit down with Kelly. Here's an excerpt from his June 1 show:
JONES: Megyn's like, “Oh, we're going to get dinner, a nice big steak,” and I said, “Megyn, you don't like me. Stop acting like it.” And she goes, “I do.” … I just want it known: I am not doing the interview 'cause she's a pretty girl. I'm doing it 'cause I can't be a wimp and turn it down.”
STONE: Look, I think you should take her out for a big piece of meat. They got the best steakhouses in the world right here in Austin. I can't wait to see this interview.
JONES: Well, I'll be sure to take my wife if that happens.
Good idea, Alex. Better follow the Pence Policy, just in case she puts the moves on you.
Jones made sure to establish that day that Kelly is not his type. “Megyn Kelly doesn't have enough meat on her bones,” he said.