'The Madness of Believing' Grand Central Publishing I knew something was wrong when I heard him breathing heavily, more so than usual, moving quickly down the hallway toward my desk.
As I stared out the office window, bracing for Jones’s arrival, the first vehicle appeared in the parking lot. Whoever was behind the wheel drove fast, erratic, like they were in a hurry to arrive somewhere they hadn’t been invited. Close behind was an SUV, followed by a van wrapped in an American flag decal. For a moment I forgot Jones was approaching until I heard his voice behind me. “We’re under attack.” His tone had a burr of excitement that didn’t match the words. Seeing the American flag on the van outside, I assumed they were fans of Jones’s show who had somehow discovered the location of his office. Even though I tried to hide it, Jones was perceptive enough in that moment to notice my skepticism.
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“See for yourself,” he said, pointing out the window.
As I turned back to face the parking lot, a group of men in military fatigues jumped out of one of the vehicles and approached the office door. A few tried to peek inside as others banged with closed fists on the blacked-out glass. From the side of the building more people appeared, including a bald man wearing a red-and-yellow Italian soccer jersey. He had a megaphone strapped to his shoulder. As this scene played outside, Jones rummaged through the metal cabinet behind me, pulling out one of his usual white Dixie Cups and filling it with vodka.
“I know you’re in there, Alex,” the man outside said into the megaphone. “I just want to talk to you. Come on out so we can have a conversation.”
Jones whispered for me and Dew to step away from the door. At first, I didn’t recognize the man outside, but as I peered closer from around the corner, I realized it was Pete Santilli, the meddler who had been embedded with Cliven Bundy in Nevada. Santilli was at the helm of a caravan heading to the Southern border, a calculated move designed to fan the flames of anxiety over migrants crossing into America. Frustrated by Jones’s silence and lack of support, he stood outside, his voice ringing out with urgency. “All right,” he said, his words echoing through the parking lot. “I just saw someone in there, so I know you can hear me. Send Alex out. I just want to talk.”
We heard a commotion coming from the other side of the building and darted past the door, moving swiftly down the hallway. By this time, many of the Infowars employees had congregated in the warehouse to see what was going on. Through the tinted glass of our loading bay door for delivery trucks, I saw more people in the back alley. We were surrounded. A metallic noise in the far corner of the room, what sounded like heavy metal scraping on hinges, caught my attention. The door of Jones’s gun safe was open.
Cliff, an old high school friend of Jones’s, was visiting the office that day, and I watched as he and Dalton removed two Barrett M82 sniper rifles from the safe. They lowered the bipod stands on each rifle and began loading the high-capacity magazines with .50 caliber rounds they pulled from heavy-gauge steel ammunition boxes. Jones paced back and forth like a pseudo war general. He claimed to have spotted one of the men outside carrying a gun. Dalton and Cliff propped the rifles on a long table in the warehouse and aimed them through the window at the strangers’ heads. “If any of them break through the glass,” Jones said, gulping down the rest of his drink, “shoot them.” This wasn’t the first time I feared someone might be gunned down at work.
A week earlier, I sat in the back of Dalton’s truck, surrounded by firearms as we made our way to a private ranch owned by Cliff.
We hit the road early that morning, the sun creeping over sand-colored pastures dotted with grazing cattle, heading to the same place where we’d taken John McAfee a year earlier. Upon arrival, Cliff walked me through basic range safety and showed me how to load and shoot some of the guns. I had little experience with firearms despite growing up in a small Southern town immersed in that culture. My father had a handgun for protection, but I had never shown much interest. Just then, I spotted Jones’s white Ford Raptor cresting a steep ravine in the distance. He stepped out of his truck and stumbled toward us. “You fellas ready to blow some shit up?” Jones asked, placing his hand on my shoulder. I could smell liquor on his breath.
His objective for the day was to make a clickbait video of explosions and women wielding guns. Since McAdoo was the lone on-air-woman at Infowars, he forced her to join us. She didn’t have much experience with firearms and her discomfort was palpable. Cliff tried to show her the ropes, but Jones grew impatient. “It’s not rocket science, Lee Ann. Just grab hold of the thing and pull the trigger.” He nudged me, chuckling like a teenage boy.
This, as far as I could tell, was how Jones acted around women—relying on sexual innuendo and treating them like objects for amusement. To be fair, he didn’t treat the average man much better, but at least there was a modicum of respect. McAdoo fired an AR-15 at bowling pins we’d set up a few yards away. Despite her lack of experience, she was a good shot, missing the target only a few times.
It was hot outside and I huddled underneath a small tent with Dalton, Cliff, and Dew, loading spent magazines. McAdoo stood over by the cooler, and Jones kicked dust a few feet away, wielding an AR-15. We were chatting, pressing bullets into the spring-loaded magazines, when suddenly there was a loud shattering sound. Instinctively, we dropped low, peering around to see what had happened. A patch of dirt exploded into the air between me and McAdoo, and it took a moment for my mind to catch up with the reality of what had just happened. Jones had fired the gun at us.
The gunshot rang out, echoing through the open fields surrounding us. “Whoops,” Jones said, pulling back the charging handle to check the gun’s chamber. We had taken the magazines out of the guns, but Jones had failed to check if a bullet was chambered and didn’t have the safety on — two of the most basic safety precautions Cliff had taught me, and tried to teach McAdoo before Jones grew impatient and interrupted him.
There was a moment of silence as we all took in what had happened. “Fuck,” Dalton mouthed, glancing over at a wide- eyed Cliff. McAdoo broke the silence. “What the hell was that?” she shouted. “Will someone tell her it was a joke?” Jones said. He sounded bored. “It’s not funny,” McAdoo said.
“Well, I apologize,” Jones replied, rolling his eyes. “But if I wanted to kill someone, I could.” His voice grew quiet. “It’s not like I haven’t done it before…”
We all looked at one another, confused.
“I’m kidding,” he interjected with a sly grin.
In the face of McAdoo’s righteous indignation, Jones didn’t respond with anger but insisted he’d fired the gun in our direction on purpose, still trying to brush it off as a joke, like that somehow made it better. As she stood in shock, the others finally spoke up, running like mythical lemmings off a cliff to his defense. It was humiliating to watch them, aware of how insane Jones’s actions were, treat McAdoo like she was unhinged and humorless. Although I cringed, I remained silent; not just among the cowards, but very much a part of them.
As far as I could tell, Jones had no real friends in his life who weren’t beholden to him financially, and no relationships where the power dynamic wasn’t in his favor. When he made mistakes, there was always someone there, if not many, to enable him.
Almost as quickly as the bullet was fired, the moment vanished. McAdoo calmed down, and no one brought it up again. We resumed loading magazines, cracked open a few more beers, filled an old television with Tannerite, and blew it up.
In the office a week later, Jones continued pacing back and forth in the warehouse, pretending to be in a war movie while Buckley was in the hallway, calling the police. Dalton and Cliff kept the rifles aimed outside, but no one approached the windows again. Before long, two officers arrived in the parking lot and spoke to Santilli. Santilli shouted at the building, asserting the police had deemed him and his crowd peaceful and lawful, emphasizing that they were not armed. “They came here to save you from someone with an iPad and a bullhorn,” he said, mocking Jones.
We were all gathered on the other side of the windows, Jones acting like he knew all along they weren’t armed, laughing, ignoring the fact that only minutes earlier there were sniper rifles trained on the people outside, people who shared many of the same conspiratorial beliefs as he did.
“You’re a conspiracy theorist!” Santilli shouted into the megaphone. “You know who I am. I’m the guy you’ve been telling everyone is an FBI informant behind my back. I’m not an FBI informant, I’m a public informant. And you’re a shill! Your dad is a dentist who did specialty work for the CIA. What’s up with that? Alex, I came here to approach you and shake your hand, but you’re too much of a pussy to come to the door.”
The fact that neither of the shock jock conspiracy theorists recognized the irony of calling one another conspiracy theorists was not lost on me.
I walked back to my desk in a daze as everyone resumed their work. With each extreme encounter, we all grew more desensitized to the ridiculousness, compartmentalizing just how close we’d come to disaster. If Santilli had arrived just a few hours earlier or later and run into Jones in the parking lot, there’s no telling what would have happened.
The weight of danger had become a familiar presence, and it was only compounded a few weeks later when another threat revealed itself. Austin’s chief of police, Art Acevado, told Jones that his team had become aware of a man posting comments online speculating about the location of the Infowars offices and threatening to drive from out of state to kill Jones and his employees. Acevado said they had been keeping tabs on this unknown man and discovered, through his posts, that he’d figured out our address, rented a car, and was making his way to Austin. They stopped him somewhere along the outskirts of town, driving with a trunk full of firearms.
He urged Jones to take this man seriously, warning this wasn’t the first threat, but Jones waved his caution away like an inconvenience. Yet as soon as Acevado left, Jones’s poise evaporated and was replaced by a feverish energy. He moved into the War Room with Dew and me. “We’re all in danger,” he said, his voice urgent. “This isn’t a game and we all better get deadly serious.” Being a part of Infowars was not just a temporary sacrifice, but an irrevocable black mark on all of us, and according to Jones, working alongside him would forever stain our résumés and limit our prospects. “That’s why we’re all fighting to change the world,” he said. “Otherwise, we won’t be able to live in it.” Dew looked reinvigorated by this pep talk. But I was horrified, my stomach in knots. It finally dawned on me: This wasn’t just a job; it was a trap.
Excerpted from the book The Madness of Believing by Josh Owens. Copyright © 2026 by Josh Owens. Reprinted with Permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.
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