Alex Jones dumps Donald Trump for Ron DeSantis

InfoWars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has jettisoned his support for Donald Trump and is backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the 2024 presidential race.

Jones, who was recently ordered to pay $49.3 million to parents of a Sandy Hook school shooting victim in a defamation case, admitted he’s ‘pigheadedly’ supported Trump throughout the years.

But, he said on his InfoWars podcast, he’s now backing DeSantis, who is ‘way better than Trump.’ 

Jones said he originally supported Trump because he wanted to keep Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden from becoming president. But he said he disagreed with the former president’s Warp Speed initiative, which developed the covid vaccine. 

‘I’ve been persecuted like nothing in my life for supporting [Trump], and that made me kind of pigheadedly support him a few years ago even though I disagreed with his Warp Speed,’ Jones said. 

Jones is against the vaccine. DeSantis appointed a surgeon general named Joseph Ladapo, who has made public statements questioning the covid vaccine’s effectiveness. The Florida governor also has forbid schools in his state from mandating covid vaccines. 

‘But that said, I am supporting DeSantis. DeSantis is just gone from being awesome to being unbelievably good … He’s getting red-pilled more and more each day … I’m a DeSantis guy,’ he noted.

‘Red-pilled’ is a reference to the film The Matrix that is used by the right-wing to describe a person becoming conservative.

‘I thought that we had to keep [Trump] in office because of the nightmare scenario if Hillary or Biden got in,’ Jones said. ‘With that said, I am supporting DeSantis. DeSantis has just gone from being awesome to being unbelievably good. And I don’t just watch a man’s actions, as Christ said. Judge a tree by its fruits. I can also look in his eyes on HD video and I see the real sincerity.’ 

He said DeSantis, who won the office of Florida governor largely thanks to Trump’s support, is who Trump should emulate. 

‘This is what Trump should be like. And I’ve been hammering this point, and he’s doing it now. And we have someone that is better than Trump. Way better than Trump,’ Jones said.

Neither Trump nor DeSantis has said they are running for president in 2024. Trump has hinted at it but DeSantis has said he is focused on his re-election bid this year.

Both men have topped recent polling on a hypothetical 2024 Republican primary. 

But a Florida poll released Tuesday saw DeSantis with a slight lead over the former president. 

Jones was back in the news earlier this month when he was ordered to pay $49.3 million to parents of a Sandy Hook school shooting victim in their defamation case.

The Texas jury ordered Jones to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages to the parents in addition to another $4.1 million he must pay Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis for the suffering he put them through by claiming for years that the shooting was a hoax.

Heslin and Lewis’ 6-year-old son, Jesse, was shot dead by Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook in December 2012. 

For years, Jones has falsely claimed that the nation´s deadliest school shooting – which killed 20 students and six educators – was a hoax. 

He now concedes it was real.