Jones Short on Straight Answers in Kelly Interview

Megyn Kelly's deeply controversial interview with Alex Jones aired Sunday night—and although a sizable chunk of her Sunday Night segment on Jones and his Infowars media operation was devoted to explaining why NBC would give airtime to a man who has claimed the Sandy Hook mass shooting was a hoax, some critics were unconvinced. "Here's the thing, Alex Jones isn't going away," Kelly said, who noted that praise for President Trump has helped expand the conspiracy theorist's influence. Jones leaked audio of his conversations with Kelly days before the broadcast. A roundup of coverage:

• Jones failed to provide a straight answer when Kelly, who said she would deal with his "notorious lie," pressed him on his Sandy Hook claims, the AP reports. He claimed to have been playing "devil's advocate" when he said the shootings were faked, but also said there was "cover-up and manipulation" surrounding the massacre and some of the footage "looks like a drill."

• The light that Kelly promised to shine on Jones turned out to be a "dim bulb at best," according to Lorraine Ali at the Los Angeles Times. She says Kelly asked tough questions but failed to push for answers, noting that when Kelly asked Jones about his claim that the people killed in the concert attack in Manchester last month were "liberal trendies," Jones delivered a "senseless word salad of an answer" that Kelly failed to follow up.
• Jack Shafer at Politico disagrees, saying Kelly gave Jones a "pantsing," taking him apart in a "textbook manner." "Short of waterboarding him, I don’t know what more Kelly could have done to expose Jones’ dark methods," he writes, adding that despite outrage over the interview, dealing straight-on with people like Jones is more effective than pretending he doesn't exist.
• Kelly was "out of her league" in the interview, according to Don Kaplan at the New York Daily News. "Sure, she looked tough as she grilled Jones, but Kelly delivered no news," he writes. "She did not move the story of this monster forward, nor provide anything aside from a shallow profile of a frightening, sweaty, tin-foil-hat-wearing nutjob."
• The interview "fell flat," but it wasn't a disaster and Jones didn't run rings around Kelly the way some feared he might, Maya Kosoff writes at Vanity Fair. "Whether the interview was worth NBC's week of grief is another question," she adds.

(More Alex Jones stories.)