Alex Jones, the right-wing host of the radio show InfoWars, says he was wrong to link the Greek yogurt company Chobani LLC and its owner, Hamdi Ulukaya, to a 2016 child-sex-abuse scandal and a rise in tuberculosis cases in Twin Falls, Idaho, where the company is located.
Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant of Kurdish descent, was targeted by Jones and other right-wing critics for hiring more than 300 refugees in his factories and launching a foundation to help them. In addition to appearing on the Alex Jones YouTube channel, the original claims were “promoted on Twitter under the headline ‘Idaho Yogurt Maker Caught Importing Migrant Rapists,’ and were spread widely online,” says The New York Times.
In a statement at the end of one of his broadcasts this week, Jones said: “During the week of April 10, 2017, certain statements were made on the InfoWars Twitter feed and YouTube channel regarding Chobani, LLC that I now understand to be wrong. The Tweets and video have now been retracted, and will not be reposted. On behalf of InfoWars, I regret that we mischaracterized Chobani, its employees and the people of Twin Falls, Idaho, the way we did,” he said.
Chobani sued Jones in April of this year, but after Jones’ retraction all charges have been dropped. Jones was in familiar territory, though, since he also had to apologize in March for spreading the so-called Pizzagate hoax, “which claimed, falsely, that top Democratic officials were involved with a child abuse ring centered on Comet Ping Pong, a restaurant in Washington,” says the Times.