In today’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Michael explains how he thinks Marco Rubio should have handled his run-in with Alex Jones.
“You can’t win an altercation with Alex Jones. That’s not gonna happen. Alex Jones creates spectacle. There is no way to win that,” Knowles said. “There’s no way to look cool doing that. Denying that you know who he is, trying to laugh at him, trying to get in his face, trying to threaten him, whatever.”
Rubio should have instead walked away sooner, Knowles suggested.
“So, I think he should have just walked away sooner. If you get down into a fight with Alex Jones, you can’t leave it looking good. You can’t,” Knowles said. “This is true of a lot of people in politics, but you can’t leave it looking good.”
Video and transcript below:
(Plays clip of Rubio and Jones)
So, there’s so much here. If you couldn’t hear that, that would be Mr. Marco Rubio – and Alex Jones comes into this little press gaggle and just starts getting right in Rubio’s face. There’s a big debate happening right now over how Rubio handled this.
I got to say I think he could have handled it better. I don’t think this was the best way. If Alex Jones gets up in your face, starts screaming at you – you’re at a hearing about big tech censorship of people – and Alex Jones is one of the big faces of tech censoring people on the Right. I use the term ‘the Right’ broadly, because Alex Jones probably wouldn’t be considered a conservative or call himself a conservative. He’s a little more out there than that, but certainly he does fall broadly within the Right. There is no way that Marco Rubio doesn’t know who he is. Of course Marco Rubio knows who he is! Everybody knows who he is. He’s on TV all the time, because, Alex Jones, as you saw in that clip is very good at making a spectacle. So of course, he does.
I just felt like this is the kind of classic politician response. Say: “Oh, I haven’t seen that!” Whenever there’s a damaging video or somebody does a hit piece or does a damaging advertisement or something they say: “Oh, I haven’t seen it! I’ve heard about it, but I haven’t seen it.” And they deny and they deny, but that’s not credible here.
And then Marco Rubio says: “I swear to God, I don’t know who you are.” Which is, I think, for a lot of listeners a little jarring because we all know that Marco Rubio knows who Alex Jones is. So, you say: “I swear to God.” What are you doing here? What is the game that you’re playing? And also Alex Jones isn’t gonna take that for an answer. And I’ll show you how this ends up.
(Plays second clip)
I pity Marco Rubio here, because, you know, what was he going to do in this situation?
But I think that what he did was just leave at the end, right, he said: “Okay I’m leaving my little press gaggle and you guys can talk to Alex Jones. I’m getting out of here,” because it was so awkward.
It was not making good video. It didn’t look good. He should have done that the second he saw Alex Jones from down the hallway, said like nope. Not. See ya.
You can’t win an altercation with Alex Jones. That’s not gonna happen.
Alex Jones creates spectacle. There is no way to win that. There’s no way to look cool doing that. Denying that you know who he is, trying to laugh at him, trying to get in his face, trying to threaten him, whatever.
It doesn’t work. The guy is immune to it, because they’re turning the frogs gay, you know.
So, I think he should have just walked away sooner. If you get down into a fight with Alex Jones, you can’t leave it looking good. You can’t. This is true of a lot of people in politics, but you can’t leave it looking good.