The Onion has agreed to a new deal to take over Infowars, the conspiracy outlet founded by Alex Jones, and its first teaser dropped on Wednesday with a former fictional host recast as a red-pilled independent podcaster in the style of Tucker Carlson.
Tim Heidecker, who has spent years parodying Jones’ gruff, hysteric mannerisms, said he reached out through his agent when he first heard The Onion was looking to acquire Infowars. “Frankly, I didn’t hear back. It got put on the back burner,” Heidecker said. He has long played in the satirical waters of Office Hours and On Cinema, and the new push puts him squarely in the orbit of a project that has been waiting in the wings since 2024.
The deal first came together after the verdict in favor of a coalition of Sandy Hook families who sued Jones for defamation over his baseless claims that the school shooting had been a false-flag hoax. That ruling pushed Jones and Infowars into bankruptcy, placed his assets under a court-appointed monitor and set up a liquidation process whose proceeds will go to the families. The Onion first entertained the idea of taking over Infowars that year, but the plan was stalled by legal maneuvers from Jones and competing prospective buyers.
The new arrangement is still awaiting judicial approval. Under the settlement reached with the Sandy Hook families, The Onion will pay a monthly licensing fee to the court-appointed manager of Infowars, a structure that appears designed to turn a bitter legal saga into a new media operation. Ben Collins said Monday that the deal was “the culmination of a two-year-long effort to get some justice for the Sandy Hook families.”
That is the measure of what comes next: if the court signs off, Infowars is likely to be reshaped into a comedic outfit with Heidecker at its creative helm, and the site once built around Jones’ own voice would be repurposed for satire. For readers trying to understand how this odd turn happened, Josh Owens’ account of years inside Alex Jones’ orbit adds another layer to the story and helps explain why the brand’s fall has taken so long to unwind.