The teenage survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting have proven, over and over, that they’re very adept at Twitter. They are, after all, teens. Previous dragging targets have included Donald Trump, Tomi Lahren, Marco Rubio, and the NRA at large. Today, survivor David Hogg added Alex Jones to the list. Jones has since claimed that Hogg is “bullying him,” the latest in their ongoing, online saga.
The beef between Hogg and Jones started after Jones’s Infowars YouTube channel received a disciplinary strike over the weekend — three and you’re out — for a video he’d posted portraying Hogg as a “crisis actor.” (Last week, a different video insinuating that Hogg was a paid actor and not a shooting survivor was the No. 1 trending video on YouTube before it was taken down for violating the platform’s terms of service.) Hogg tweeted that Jones was “really confused” about him and offered to come on his show to help clarify a few things to the “shit journalist.”
Jones replied with a string of tweets, saying he’d like to take Hogg up on the offer. “I would love to have you on today to clear up some of the disinformation that has been put out about my statements concerning the tragedy,” Jones tweeted. “I notice you’re calling me a ‘shit journalist’ and ‘snake oil’ salesman when I have never called you any disparaging names.” He also said that he was never sued by any survivors of previous school shootings. (Families from Sandy Hook sent a legal warning to NBC prior to its airing of an interview with Jones and Megyn Kelly in 2017. Jones called the Sandy Hook shooting “completely fake with actors” in 2015.)
Hogg did not reply to any of Jones’s tweets. On Tuesday, Jones posted a video on Twitter, inviting Hogg, once again, to come on his show. “Do you support the First Amendment,” Jones says in the video. “I know you don’t support the Second Amendment.”
Hogg responded on his own Twitter saying that he wouldn’t be appearing on Infowars. He explained that when he tweeted his original offer to “clear some of this up” his wasn’t aware “just how awful so many people have been to victims and witnesses of these events [shootings] in the past.” “So many people,” clearly, was meant to include Jones.
Which brings us back to Jones saying that Hogg is “bullying” him. And scene!