InfoWars

History

Pre-debut (2022–2026)

Courts had ordered Jones to pay approximately $1.4 billion in damages to the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting after he lost a defamation lawsuit. During Jones' bankruptcy proceedings, Infowars was initially licensed to The Onion in a deal with the court-appointed manager of the property. Although a Texas appeals court officially paused the acquisition following an appeal by Jones, The Onion pressed ahead with the production of its parody programming with comedian Tim Heidecker as creative director.

Speaking in an interview with Time, Tim Heidecker claimed that he initially plans to turn Infowars into a parody of itself, portraying it as a conspiracy media network that mainly feeds on the audience's rage and fear, like Jones did during his management and ownership of it, stating:

I think there'll be a transition phase where we're doing kind of Onion-style parody, satire, reflecting back the absurdities of Infowars and the right-wing media culture. Not so much the political stuff, but sort of just the hacky supplements and trying to bilk your grandparents out of their life savings kind of style.

We want to kind of let that run its course, and play in that sandbox for a little while. Then we just think that that's going to get old, but we'll have built this little brand, or sort of re-established a brand and turn it into a destination for good comedy— a new streaming site, a new comedy platform.

According to Brad Holbrook, who portrays Jim Haggerty, The Onion's head of video, Ryan Natoli, envisioned Haggerty as a disgraced television host running an archetypal populist independent show. Holbrook stated in an interview with AV Club:

I [got] an email from [Onion video head] Ryan Natoli in Chicago. He said, "We're all thinking about Jim Haggerty. Clearly he's been fired from his hosting job, and now he's the Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, jaded, provocateur, conspiracy theorist, angered by the system that did him wrong, so he's going to come after them on a podcast. Could you wear that persona?"

That's right up my alley. I'm not a conspiracy theorist per se, but I've been around the block long enough. I've seen it all, and there's ample reason to be disgusted by what the world is today, and I'd be more than happy to make fun of it any way I could.

Debut and shows (2026–present)

In the first episode of Emergency, Heidecker claimed that Jones died and was replaced with an impostor, presented in the show as fact with a video of him suddenly "popping like a balloon" inside his car. Heidecker had done so as a method of "wish fulfillment" for victims and to attract Jones' attention with a deliberately false, nonsensical death claim. Heidecker does not plan to make Jones the sole focus of Emergency, intending to eventually pivot its format into a platform for new comedians and pay the Sandy Hook families the money he claims "Jones will never pay", and the show's focus into his life "falling apart".

Speaking to Fast Company, Heidecker then stated:

For the short term we’re gonna take direct shots at what everyone thinks of as InfoWars and goof on that pretty directly. We’ve been calling that phase one. Then phase two is to become a player and a competitor to the various . . . social media platforms.”

Throughout the streams, The Onion has begun selling merchandise related to both variants of InfoWars, such as "Demon Guard" bandages that promise to protect the wearer from demonic influence, and plushies and stickers of gay frogs, referencing Jones' previous claims of atrazine turning them homosexual.

Overview

YouTube channel

A weekly InfoWars stream consists of an intro related to "The InfoWars Elf", the show's proposed mascot, which was rejected by The Onion's parent company; Global Tetrahedron, in the show's metafictional narrative, followed by an episode of The Jim Haggerty Show and one of Emergency; with short satirical product infomercials, vertical video skits, and membership subscription ads for The Onion between them; airing on YouTube each Thursday at 20:00 EDT.

A weekly InfoWars stream airs on YouTube each Thursday at 19:00 CST with special presentation episodes and the weekly show InfoWars Nerve Center. The satiric product infomercials from the debut season, both for the fictional products and the real products released by The Onion; and skits with the spinning InfoWars screen bug continue in the form of short-form on-demand video content. These infomercials are typically hosted by actor Troy Dillinger.

Website

Since the debut of InfoWars, The Onion has used the initial domain "theonion.info" to demonstrate their own version of Jones' original and currently inactive "infowars.com", with a simplistic interactive design based after the spinning InfoWars screen bug and spoof image based ads that have been prepared by both The Onion and InfoWars; with an "alarm button" that causes the entire website content move away by itself to a certain distance and spin as various imagery takes the role of a background. After the debut of InfoWars Nerve Center, the website has been updated and moved to "therealinfowars.com" with the focus of the content being streamed over YouTube instead of Jones' conspiracy theory articles based approach, with the old .info domain currently routing to the content of .com domain.

The new and current website has a spinning globe with three 3D InfoWars wordmarks consisting of clickable episodes and shorts that have been previously uploaded on YouTube, an episode guide per show with a countdown for currently airing shows, an embedded Bluesky feed of their official account to deliver new social media posts, and a schedule for the upcoming episodes of their shows. It also has a new "surf" section where the visitors can simulate a digital television setting with latest episodes, an EPG of upcoming episodes, randomly ordered short-form ads made by The Onion and appeared on past InfoWars episodes under a separate paid programming channel, and past episodes of shows in the shape of multiple and separate channels.

Shows

Just as Jones' original Infowars acts like an online media network/television channel with a programming schedule, the reboot InfoWars has multiple shows aired each week per episode. Separate on-demand episodes of each show and edited VOD versions of the broadcasts may also be uploaded on the YouTube channel between each stream.

Debuted in July 2026

The Jim Haggerty Show: A parodic conspiratorial right-wing video podcast series starring Jim Haggerty, a fictional former morning news show host turned podcaster who used to host Onion News Network's satirical Today Now! segments and previously starred in the web series Porkin' Across America; claiming to speak about governmental misdeeds despite the danger allegedly inherent to the act. Each week, he hosts a guest where he talks about a singular topic for the entirety of the episode, such as CIA cover-ups or Christianity, but rapidly jumps between subtopics between them, often followed by asking the guest about the possibility of being made into a martyr for his claims and stances without actually dying.

Emergency with Tim Heidecker (shortened to Emergency): The first main show hosted on InfoWars where the host, Tim Heidecker, talked about events in the fashion of Alex Jones with the same rapid-fire, conspiratorial style, often stuttering and screaming over his guests and callers. With Heidecker's death within the show's fiction, the show gained a new and final host, Phil Braun, on its last episode.

Debuted in September 2026

Week of Miracles: The first special presentation episode of InfoWars about televangelists performing miracles on stage, presented by Vic Berger and Ben Craw.

Alpha Child System: The second special presentation episode of InfoWars where the schoolchildren are trained to become a stereotypical alpha male that dominated amongst the society, presented by Jay Weingarten with the first major speaking role of The InfoWars Elf since his debut.

Debuted in October 2026

The Tim Heidecker Podcast: The third special presentation episode of InfoWars where Heidecker returns back to host a video podcast.

InfoWars HQ: The fourth special presentation episode of InfoWars about the happenings in the headquarters of the show behind the cameras, with a compilation of newer skits that haven't been released before.

InfoWars Nerve Center: The first weekly main show on InfoWars debuting on InfoWars Fall with new hosts since Emergency, that's been described as the brain of the movement without any focus on conspiracy type of fake news of the former.

Episodes

One-shot content

Besides being the satiric take of the conspiracy theory spewing content creators like the original Infowars, InfoWars also parodies and satirizes various genres of topics related to internet culture in their skits and visual presentations.

Reception

Alex Jones' reaction

Jones has reacted and commented on The Onion's winning bid for taking over everything related to Infowars and its brand on his X account, as seen on CNN:

Are the Connecticut Democrats with The Onion newspaper bought us, they asked, do they outbid? They said, well, it was competitive. So they changed all the bidding rules, made it secret. Two days ago, I had a bad feeling, I told you that. And just like they tried to shut us down back in late May without a court order, they're supposed to have a court order. There's going to be injuctions filed. About to go live out of Harrison's American Journal studio. I don't know what's going to happen. But I'm going to be here until they come in and turn the lights off.