One of the current complaints of the Trump right concerns the treatment given to Alex Jones by Facebook, which has temporarily banned the radio host for videos that violated “community standards.” According to Lou Dobbs of the Fox Business Network, “freedom of speech [is] under attack.” Fox News television personality Tucker Carlson has also come to Jones’s defense, saying sarcastically, “I know we’re supposed to think Alex Jones is way more radical than, like, Bill Maher.”

Well, yes, that is precisely what we should think. At various points, Jones has promoted the belief that 9/11 was an “inside job,” that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of a pizzeria, that NASA had built a child slave colony on Mars in order to harvest blood and bone marrow, that the Oklahoma City bombing, the Boston Marathon bombing and the Sandy Hook school shooting were government “false flag” operations, that some shooting survivors were “crisis actors,” that “globalists” are intent on committing genocide and that Democrats are on the verge of launching a second civil war.

There are few things I enjoy less than spilling ink on Jones’s vile lunacy. But President Trump has made a great many unpleasant things unavoidable. He has appeared on Jones’s Infowars program and assured Jones that his “reputation is amazing.” The White House briefly gave Infowars a press credential. And Donald Trump Jr. has retweeted Infowars stories.