Sen. Chris Murphy: Why aren't more Republicans condemning Alex Jones?

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., called on top Republican and conservative leaders to publicly denounce Alex Jones in the wake of Wednesday's jury verdict that the Infowars conspiracy theorist must pay $965 million to the families of the children killed in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

"I mean, Alex Jones is a clown. He's a performer, right?" Murphy said Thursday when asked during an interview on the Yahoo News "Skullduggery" podcast what he would say to Jones if he had the opportunity to talk to him. "I mean, I can't understand what goes on inside the brain of somebody like that. I can't understand any human being would delight in torturing the parents of dead children. I don't know how you sort of live with yourself if that's what you do every day.

“But I guess I want the focus to be much more broadly than on Alex Jones. Alex Jones is still a celebrity on the political right. He still gets defended by mainstream Republicans, right?

“So I'm not going to change Alex Jones's business model, but man, why aren't there more Republicans out there condemning this guy? Why is he still invited to all of these conservative conferences until the political right decides that these conspiracy theorists, these Sandy Hook harassers, are going to be purged from the right. Somebody will replace Alex Jones because there's a market there for it. So the culpability here is on Jones, but it is also much more broadly on the Republican Party that continues to celebrate Alex Jones.”

Murphy's comments came as another jury in Florida sentenced to life in prison Nikolas Cruz, the shooter who murdered 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.

Murphy was in the U.S. House in 2012 representing the Connecticut district where Sandy Hook is located, and he has a long relationship with the families of the victims. Many of those victims have suffered repeated harassment as a result of Jones’ lies claiming that a government hoax was behind the massacre in which 20 first graders and six educators were killed.

To make his case that Republicans have given credence to Jones, Murphy pointed to Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance who last year tweeted, "Alex Jones is a far more reliable source of information than Rachel Maddow. One of them is censored by the regime. The other promoted by it." (Vance has since downplayed the tweet, saying he was "just kind of trolling" at the time and trying to raise questions about Maddow, the MSNBC host, as a reliable source of information.) Notably, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2015 also appeared on Jones' show, where the future GOP nominee praised Jones' "amazing" reputation.

Still, Murphy — who earlier this year worked with Republicans to pass a modest gun control measure — said he believes the Sandy Hook family-backed movement to curb gun violence will pay bigger dividends down the road.

“I think it's a watershed moment,” Murphy said. “I really do. Prior to Sandy Hook, the gun lobby was omnipotent. They got everything they asked for. That was the period of time in which the assault weapons ban expired. That was when they got the product liability exemption for firearms. Then Sandy Hook happens, and for the next 10 years, we build the sort of modern anti-gun violence movement. … But now we are entering what I think will be a decade of progress, a decade in which it's the anti-gun violence movement that is dominant, maybe not omnipotent because we still have a pretty strong force on the other side. But this is our decade.”