Robbie Parker. Welcome to The Assignment.

Thank you.

So, where do you want to start in terms of that day?

So, it was a day where I woke up early. So, because I had some extra time, I just peeked into Emilie's room. She was sitting on the edge of her bed because we had this rule, like, she wasn't allowed to come out of her room before 7:00.

Yeah.

She was such an early riser. And so she was just sitting on her bed just, like, waiting for 7:00. So it was one of those random chance moments that I got to just have this nice moment with her that day.

Emilie Parker was a real person. This year, she would be 18 years old. Old enough to vote.

Good evening, everyone. There is, of course, only one story tonight. You know what it is.

Instead, in 2012, she, along with 19 other children and six adults, were murdered by a mass shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

We have new details to tell you about, but we're not going to pretend that we understand it any better than we did right after it happened. It is a horror beyond words. An elementary school, kids as young as five years old.

Emilie's father, Robbie Parker, is also a real person. And I'm telling you this because for a good many years after her death, people accosted Parker, accusing him of not being a real person, of being a crisis actor, of trying to take away their guns, of not ever having had a daughter who died, of a bunch of other stories churned out of the internet grist mill of conspiracy theories. So today I'm talking to Robbie Parker about the death of his daughter at Sandy Hook, how he helped sue Alex Jones' Infowars and won, and what he thinks of election year gun politics. I'm Audie Cornish and this is The Assignment.

Right now, you can visit an auction website where Alex Jones' Infowars Media Company is being sold off piece by piece to pay the more than $1 billion he owes relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Robbie Parker was a key part of that lawsuit, but it took him a long time to come around, took him a long time to speak publicly about anything, really, because of what he had experienced as the central character in a conspiracy theory fantasy peddled by Jones and others.

Fantasy is a great, wonderful word to use for that because I've struggled to really try to articulate that. I always would say it's like I was getting sucked into this other dimension. It's like we're still on Earth, we're still living in this thing, but I'm experiencing a completely different realm of of what can also happen here on Earth.

But before we get to that, I wanted to talk to Robbie about that day in December of 2012 when he and his wife, Alissa, spent hours on the phone and drove in circles from school to the local hospital to finally the local firehouse where they waited in a room full of parents to learn the fate of their children.

You have this, like, weird place where you're wanting to hold on to hope. And if you start to doubt that hope, you feel like you're betraying your child. But you knew that there were 20 kids that had died, but you couldn't bring yourself to admit that your kid could be one of those. And so just sitting with that for a long time, that's what was hard hours of doing that. And then the governor comes in and for me, that was just really confusing. I was just like.

Why is the governor here? Yeah.

Like, what's what's he doing here? I mean, he's put in an impossible position. I'm not hating on that guy. So there's no way that anybody does this right. But it felt as though he knew all the information and didn't know that we didn't know.

So just so people have an understanding here, you've been waiting in this room for hours. And there's a reason why I'm talking about this, about what happens in our brains when there is a vacuum of information, when we don't know what's going on. And he walks into a room full of expectant parents who are waiting to hear something and starts talking about their children as though they have past, like just launching right into it.

Yeah. Yeah. And so somebody actually had, one of the moms and I didn't know who she was at the time, you know, she just flat out just asked, so are you are you telling us that our kids are dead? And he looked confused that he was getting asked that question and he was like, yes. And then Alissa, she picked up like spoke up right away and was like, what about the kids that went to the hospital? And he was like, those kids have expired. And so.

And used that word.

Yeah. And so again, I, that was, it was hard to hear it described like that. And I'm not putting judgment on him. I mean, again, he was in an impossible position. But when you're the receiver of that news, and I'm also in a position where because of my work, I've delivered the news of a death of a child.

Yes.

To parents.

And we should say that you were working at a nearby hospital in the neonatal unit in the intensive care. So, the NICU, which is a place where the silence is deafening. You would know most more than the typical parent what it is to break that kind of news to another parent.

Right. And then to be on the receiving end. And that's what I was really struggling with that day, was I know how to show up in a crisis situation. I know how to behave in a crisis situation when it's somebody else's kid. And I'd never been in a position where I would have to react to it if it was my kid.

Yeah.

And so, and then those words, "they have expired." Like, I was talking about holding on to hope. And it was like, just to not feel like there wasn't any hope anymore. But to feel the sensation that you could feel hope just slip through your fingers and evaporate.

What's fascinating is, in a way, you're in the eye of a storm where there is silence and calm and it's scary. What's swirling around outside you now is all of us, the media, the conversation, phone calls to your house. I mean, I'm just looking at you how you're experiencing, reliving this moment. And now it's totally wild to me that like outside, are people like me being like, Hey, or do you think they're picking up the phone? We should call them. Like, did you call the parent? Did you call the coach? Did you call this, like, you have all these people trying to dig up information about your life, whether they are trying to find images of your daughter or trying to figure out who you guys are, confirm things. But one of the ways you try to deal with it is to have a press conference, to issue a statement to say, okay, instead of fielding 500 phone calls, I'm going to come out, say who I am. Say who she was. What was the goal with that? And how did you spend those moments on camera?

So the goal was we are getting a lot of requests from media, a lot of family and people wanting to know how we were doing. And so it was like, okay, if I give a statement, then everybody will be okay. And like all of our families and friends were back like out west. And so I was like, this would be a way for me just to do like, like a massive, like, text, right? To everybody. Like, this is what's happening with us. This is how we're doing. And then for the media would be like, I'm going to give them a bone that they can go knaw on for a while and leave us alone. That was like the goal of it. And so there's a sense of like, if anybody's going to say anything about Emilie, it needs to be from her parents. And I wanted to make sure that we got out in front of it so that somebody else didn't say something that was inaccurate and then try to fix it. I didn't realize I was even doing a press conference. I wanted to just meet with a reporter and just give a statement that then that reporter was supposed to just share. And so I wasn't prepared to address everybody.

Go out to the, kind of,

Yeah.

Bouquet of microphones, right?

Yeah, like.

And the lights and walking out there, which is jarring for anyone in any situation, right?

Yeah.

And what happens next is you give this really lovely description of your daughter. You talk about your sadness. But like all, kind of, media morsels that got put on the internet, it gets really picked apart. Particularly how you look, how you behave, specifically, like, a laugh at the top of that. Can you talk about that? Because in the book you write about how much you've looked back on those moments, how much you've looked back at that, at least for a time, and felt, like, a lot of guilt just for having done this thing, which made a lot of sense in the moment, which is to go out and speak publicly.

Yeah. I spent a lot of time, way too much time, just hating myself for that moment where I felt that got picked apart. And you've probably seen it even just now sitting with me. Like I naturally am, like a very gregarious person. And I like to smile and I like to laugh. And it's a way that I can call myself down if I'm talking about something hard for me or something that's emotional. It's just a way for me to relax. And in that moment in particular, my dad was also present and he did one of those lame dad jokes, right? Because he could see how nervous I was. And I so I used to have a job as a mascot for like a minor league baseball team. So, like, people that knew me would call me that mascot name. His name was Oggie. He was a velociraptor for this team. Anyway, so I'm nervous. I'm sitting there, I'm realizing there's all these cameras. I don't know what to do. Nobody's coming up to tell me what I need to do. And my dad just says, Go get 'em Oggie. And so I laughed at that. I mean, it was a stupid dad joke. And I laughed at that and it helped calm me down. And then I used that to just do one of the hardest things that I'd ever done in my life at that point.

And they're getting ready to make to come to the microphone. So we'll listen in.

Start? Okay.

So my name's Robbie Parker. My family is one of the families that lost a child yesterday in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings here in Connecticut. I've been contacted by so many people and agencies wanting to know how we're doing, and I just thought that this might be the best way to to share those feelings with everybody. First of all, I'd really like to offer our depest condolences to all the families who were directly affected by this shooting. It's a horrific tragedy, and we want everybody to know that our hearts and our prayers go out to them.

How is that interpreted by conspiracy theory internet?

Yeah. So this is where I get introduced to that concept was, so that press conference happened on Saturday. The shooting happened on Friday. Saturday evening is when I do that press conference. And that also kind of shows like because people are like, why would you do that so quickly? But how much had happened in that time frame? And just kind of shows like how quickly things were moving, how quickly the media was moving to get information and get things out. And so Sunday morning is when I start seeing things online. And my friends had started a memorial page for Emilie and this conspiracy stuff like showing these screenshots of me smiling and like, Why are you smiling? Your daughter just died. And that was really shocking. That was the first time I got exposed to this idea that anything that I had done had been taken the wrong way.

Alex Jones picks this up.

Right.

'He's a conspiracy theorist. He's talked about the Oklahoma City bombing. He's talked about a lot of things leading up to Sandy Hook and in the aftermath, has talked about mass shootings as well. But his whole default position is kind of anti-establishment, that there is the government that they whatever the capital "They" is, that's out to get you the audience, he's always talking and stoking and engaged in that fear of something. But you become part of that because now he's out there being one of these people, many people who are questioning whether Sandy Hook has happened, which, at the time, as a reporter, is, like, mind boggling. Like, I'm just, I don't know how to process the things I'm reading about and the things I'm understanding from the reporting coming in and someone sitting at home being like, Well, this probably didn't happen.

Right.

When did you realize he had gotten a hold of this video, said your name, that you were now embroiled in whatever the in the Dante's rungs of conspiracy theorists you had gone further down into hell.

Right. No, totally. So that happened early on when I realized that this other world existed. So the shooting was on Friday. Sunday morning was my first exposure to that. Didn't know who Alex Jones was. I didn't know any of that. You can look back at history and demarcate, oh, this is where there was a turning point in something big happening. And that was Sandy Hook in this idea because now, yeah, he had been doing conspiratorial stuff for a long time on radio shows, so you would have to actively go and find him, right? One thing you can get Alex Jones a lot of credit for is he's always been using what's available to him. And so the internet, when the internet really wasn't a thing, he was out there doing it and social media. So he was very primed to be able to exploit this.

You start to become, in effect, paranoid, with a reason, rightfully paranoid, because it makes the leap into real life. I mean, you're getting calls, I assume, on your various phones and you're also interacting with people in public because now they can recognize you.

Yeah.

And this is even after you move. Can you talk about, like, the fear around that?

So the fear, what I can understand now, and it took me a long time to connect all these dots but, so Alex Jones and his stoking of fear, right? This existential threat was there's people out there that want to take away your guns and we're not going to let that happen. And so the reason I was called a crisis actor was because that meant that Emilie either never existed. She didn't die. Sandy Hook wasn't real because this was just a plot by me conspiring with the government to take away your guns.

Those are the messages you're getting.

Well, those are the messages that his followers were getting and people that imbibe this conspiratorial information. So they're primed to fight. They have felt this fear for a long time. They feel very, very threatened and they're already ready to act on it. So I get introduced as the they. It's not they anymore, it's him. That's the person. He's a crisis actor. He's out to get your guns. Never cared about that, right? And so that's where the fear is. So there's fear in that, these people really, really hate me and they can recognize me. So that's the fear that I'm living with.

Give an example of being. I guess, spoken to on the street.

So the shooting was on a Friday. Emilie was buried on a Saturday. And then that first week, the number of messages I got about like, what would happen to me if they ever saw me on the street. One person was a very exquisite writer in describing how, like how it would feel to him with his baseball bat smashing my brains in. And he articulated that wonderfully and left no doubt that he knew exactly what he was talking about. So I was exposed to all this before we even had a funeral for Emilie. And so knowing that there's people out there that are like literally, like salivating to have that experience if they ever saw me. So me being out in public and being recognized from wonderful people that were just really unaware about like how much that freaked me out.

I'm talking with Robbie Parker. His new book is called A Father's Fight: Taking on Alex Jones and Reclaiming the Truth About Sandy Hook. After the break, we talk about why he was hesitant to jump into the debate over guns.

One of the things that's interesting is it's many years before you get involved in suing Alex Jones. Many years go by and you have a couple conversations that affect your decision to get involved in this lawsuit. But I was shocked to see that one of the tipping point conversations that you had was with a parent from another mass shooting, right? It was the Parkland shooting in Florida. And this is such a grim fraternity. I don't know how you get connected with another parent, right? Or how they know to call a parent from Sandy Hook. Can you talk about this phone call and what kind of impact it had on you?

Yeah. It is the worst fraternity and the absolute most horrific initiation process. And it was interesting because after Sandy Hook happened, you had people from Virginia Tech, Aurora, the Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin, in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Those people were reaching out to us. And then it's weird when your're in a position.

Did you pick up the phone those times?

There were times where we did. Yeah. And, well, they were reaching out to Sandy Hook, right?

Yeah.

And so we would get, these people would like to meet with Sandy Hook victims and stuff like that, or this person's coming into town and or those kinds of things. So in this conversation with the Parkland family, it was just meant to, we're going to talk about grief. And I want to hear how you're processing your grief. So what the Parkland family did for me in this moment was they started expressing the emotions that they were having right after they lost their daughter. And it was like I remembered what it was like to be in their shoes. And I'm seeing everything that they're describing, just like replays, things that have happened to me. And the triggering thing, the mom said, she's like, I'm really glad that you guys didn't have to go through this. And in that moment, it was like, that's what broke me because I was going to make this about me in that moment. But like, I'm seeing them relive things that I had been living for six years and I knew how precious that time was. Those first moments when you're grieving. Are the most precious and sacred moments because that's the closest you're going to be to your child again, right? Every minute, every minute that passes, you're one minute away from the last time you saw her, the last time you heard her. And so you need to hold on to those things and you need to figure out how to how to grieve. And that they shouldn't be having to fight conspiracists. And so, I was put in this position where I'm like, I'm six years down the road. I have some context, I have some understanding about what it is that they're going through. I don't want them to fight this fight. I don't want them to use any ounce of energy away from just loving their daughter and their kids and doing what they need to do. And so, that was one of the first catalysts. And it took a lot of catalysts for me, but that was one of the first catalysts that made me think I need to do something.

So tell me what it is that pushed you into joining the lawsuit against Alex Jones?

So my middle daughter, she's probably around ten years old. I'm going to be really vague on the timeline here. We pulled into a Wendy's. I wanted to get the girls Frosties, and I opened up my door and we're all getting out, you know, like you do with young kids. And you're going through, like, your routine, and Madeline is just frozen in her seat. I'm like, What's up? Like, what's going on? And she just points at the car next to us and she said, That car has an Infowars bumper sticker. And so, I got back in the car and we sat down and I was like, So what are you feeling? And she goes, Isn't Infowars? Isn't that the guy that bullies you? And I was like, Are you talking about Alex Jones? And she's like, Yeah, that guy. He's the one that bullies you, right? And I was like, Yeah. Infowars is his company, his website. And he's the one that owns it. And yeah, that's the one that says a lot of mean stuff about me and about Emilie. And she said, I don't want to go inside of Wendy's if there's going to be somebody in there that's going to recognize you and is going to bully you. And there was something about the fear that she was feeling that I thought I was protecting her from by hiding, right? And hiding this, like, trying to just let her live her life. And she was so scared for me and didn't want to see me get hurt. Didn't want to, didn't want to feel that. And that was the moment where I was like, I need to do this for me. Because, like, what am I doing?

Yeah.

Right? I've been hiding. I've been running away. I've been doing all this stuff.

And it's not fooling anyone.

It's not, no. I'm only fooling myself.

It's not fooling the kid. It's not fooling, yeah.

No. She's not feeling protected right now. She doesn't know that I'm going to, I'm willing to fight for her. She, I tell her I'd fight for Emilie. Does she know that I'm willing to fight for her? And so, that was the moment where I was like, Yeah, it feels good to say I'm going to do this for her. I'm going to do this for the families. But that was the moment where I was like, I need to do this for me because I'm obviously fooling myself here.

During the case, as the case is starting to unfold, what information are you starting to learn about, like the business of conspiracy theories? Just like what he was able to accomplish using your story and the story of this massacre?

I didn't realize, like, how much I was being used by Alex Jones. And so when that started coming out in court, when our lawyers were able to show like so within hours of the shooting. So Friday, December 14th, I'm sitting in the firehouse holding on to a sliver of hope. At the same time that Alex Jones is already starting to stoke fears that this isn't real, that you need to watch out for mass shootings, that this is a false flag event. So he's already using that. And this was all information that I didn't know or comprehend fully before the trial started. And then the way he used me, any time Sandy Hook was mentioned on screen for anybody that was watching this on his YouTube channels or whatever. There'd be this real of me laughing. That five second clip just on repeat of me going and smiling and laughing. He would say my name. He wouldn't really mention a lot of anybody else by name. So I didn't realize how big the target was on me personally until I was in the courtroom.

And how much that was generating for him.

Right.

You know, I think you were writing about the idea of you guys were able to unearth the fact that they got, like, half a billion redirects from the internet directly to the Infowars website just off of Sandy Hook content alone.

Yeah.

Which sounds really mathematical but is crazy. Like, just the sheer number of people who clicked from one place to another.

Right. Because he would, you know, throw out these things on Facebook or whatever. And then, so not only are they clicking to watch a video that he does, but he's using that video to sell a product. And so that's how he makes all of this money. And they learned really quickly that when we talk about Sandy Hook, our sales spike. And so,

But in court, you're, like, getting the, you know, accounting forensics of this, like you're coming to understand what a business that it is.

Yeah. That he marks things up by like 400% and, you know, like all these kinds of things. And so and I only saw what I could ingest about clips of me. I didn't know what he did right after he got talking about me. I didn't know that he would segway from me to this male vitality pill and this like concentrated beet juice and stuff like that. That's where he made tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars by using my pain, using my daughter that was brutally murdered to sell male enhancement pills.

You know, one of the things he says eventually on the stand is he at one point says, I'm done saying, I'm sorry you wrote about this, I think in the book as well. He says, I didn't generate this. I wasn't the first person to say it. American gun owners didn't like being blamed for this, as the left did. So we rejected it mentally and said it must not be true. But I legitimately thought it might have been staged. And I stand by that. You couldn't respond in the moment because he's on stand. But like, what do you think when you hear something like that?

He's very good at his narrative of creating the fear, right. So a lot of the people that believe in these conspiracies or just believe in things that in their reality, because of what they've experienced in their lives, like, he's provided them with not just somebody to hate, but somebody that they feel listens to them, that understands their concerns. And he talks to his viewership in a way that they feel like they have a relationship with this person. I look at Alex Jones's viewership and the people that listen to him as secondary victims of what he is. And so. He has this power to be able to take very vulnerable people that have experienced whatever they've experienced in their lives and speak to that in a way that they trust him and he uses them and that vulnerability and he exploits it for profit. He exploited me and my daughter for profit, and he exploited his listeners for the same thing.

We've now reached a point where I think there's this perception among gun owners in particular, that the parents of shooting victims in these big mass shooting events, they become part of a powerful lobby. They become part of a machine by the left to somehow undermine gun rights. But you were reluctant getting into that, the politics of it. Can you talk about why and what it was like to actually deal with lawmakers?

Yeah. So I was reluctant for a number of reasons. And one was if I wanted to invoke any real change, that's why we went with school safety. That's a nonpolitical thing. Not like the only reason, but.

Yeah.

But that felt like something that you could actually do something in. Like, you can actually make a change. So part of me not getting involved in the gun issue right off the bat was one, I didn't think I was going to be able to do anything to invoke a change. And I didn't want to put that much emotional currency into something that was just going to leave me emotionally bankrupt was a big reason. Two, I was freaked out. I watched some Sandy Hook parents dip their toe in the water and they got eviscerated. I was being eviscerated and being accused of being part of this and I never said or did anything, so there was no way I was going to engage in that. And again, at the time of the shooting, I didn't have a strong opinion about guns, like my family had...

Even though people were offering them to you left and right.

Yeah, like, and this speaks for politicians that speaks for the media there speaks to a lot of different things, there are a lot of people that were coming asking us to use our story for their agenda. And that, at first, my emotions were such that, like, I want to make meaning out of Emilie's life and I want there to be something that I can be proud of and, and evoke some change and stuff like that. I wanted to give what I could, but I wasn't willing to give Emilie up or our story for somebody else's purpose. It had to be something that I felt really passionate about.

So Donald Trump's going to be speaking at the National Rifle Association again this year. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have both talked about being gun owners in a way almost bragging about it as a way to say like, look, I'm not here to take away your guns because I'm a gun owner.

RIght.

What's it like for you to hear the way that guns are being talked about in an election year?

So that's definitely an opinion that has evolved and matured over time. And it wasn't until I had my own personal experience with it. So how I feel when I watch politicians talk about guns is, honestly, I kind of roll my eyes because I know whatever they're doing, to some extent, I'm not saying that it's not personal how they feel or whatever, or their own personal opinion, but I know they're they're playing to their base on some extent, right? And so, and they're trying to do what they do because that's their politicians that are that's what they're going to do. There's so many people that see this and they react to that, but they're the ones that are being targeted, right? So, you're either being targeted by Donald Trump because you are a staunch gun owner and you're your proud card carrying Second Amendment person or you are, you know, somebody that like either doesn't care about guns or just wants them all obliterated. And I'm not going to come out against anybody, but I don't like feeling like I'm being used as a ploy for it. And I don't want anybody else to feel the same way. And so I want to talk to you. That's what I want to do. If you are somebody that feels like I am somebody that's out to take away your guns or just because my daughter was killed, that now you feel like I'm a threat to you, then we need to have a conversation. And I want to understand where you're coming from and why you feel the way you do. And I would love you to give me a chance to listen to what it is that I have experienced and hear me out. That's how I feel about it. And I don't want to talk to Donald Trump and I don't want to talk to, you know, Kamala Harris about this. I want to talk to the person who they're targeting. That's where I feel like if we're going to have change and I know this sounds very altruistic, but it's like it's on this level that change is going to happen. And I talk about these divides and these gaps that we have in me with my grief and not understanding grief or whatever. But these are these are the areas where we have places where we can bridge those gaps. But we don't believe we do because we're listening to polarized leaders.

You know, in the end, you were and the Sandy Hook families were able to, "win" their lawsuit against Alex Jones. Infowars is being liquidated as we speak. People can go and bid on his old desk if they want. But there was this kind of conflict between the folks who were suing from a Texas suit and a Connecticut suit about how exactly to punish him. What would be an apt punishment? And one was to say shut down the company, liquidate the assets. Another was to say he would have to pay a percentage of his income over the next few years. But what I was struck by is how hard it is in the end to get justice from this very strange experience. And what did you learn about fighting conspiracy theories? Because now we're in an age where, like, FEMA can't convince people, you know, it's trying to do good in a hurricane.

Right.

So what did you learn about, like, what it means to fight and what it means to get justice for this particular strange crime, so to speak?

Right. Yeah. So, justice in this sense is very, very vague, right? We talk about like a sue happy nation or culture or whatever like that. But that's the only recourse I have. I can't sue Alex Jones to make him apologize. I can't sue Alex Jones and demand that he take all of his content off the air. That's not how the system works and that's not how Alex Jones works either. So the only way to get Alex Jones to listen is to threaten his money. And the only way to actually try and find any justice is to sue him for money. I'm glad that for me, I didn't decide to join the lawsuit because I expected to receive something. I joined the lawsuit for very different reasons, and so for me, many of those were fulfilled. One of the things that were fulfilled that I wasn't expecting was the connection that I made with the other Sandy Hook parents. So to be able to sit there every day of the trial and be with them and get to know who they were as people. That was something that I was able to take away from the trial that I never expected. And so that that's not justice, but it's it helps my healing process.

Is it possible to fight conspiracies?

Absolutely, yes.

Really?

Look at what we were able to accomplish in this. So, we can talk about the historic verdict, right? This was the largest defamation verdict in American history. $1 billion. And then you add on punitive damages on top of that. So we're talking over $1 billion, right? So am I going to see any of that? No. Or very little, like, whatever. And I'm glad if, and that was what I was seeking, then I would be really disappointed and I would feel like I'm still screwed and there's no justice. But what we were able to accomplish in this is, for years, Alex Jones in particular had free reign that he could control the narrative about Sandy Hook, right? So now there is no mention of Alex Jones without there being a mention that he was a Sandy Hook denier and he lied about Sandy Hook and he harmed families of, who had their children killed. And he lied about murdered children and lied about their families. He cannot escape himself from that. So what else do I walk away from in this? Is the narration and the understanding about what really happened at Sandy Hook is out there.

The truth.

The truth.

Do you get back the truth of Emilie's death?

I get to reclaim what it was that I gave up. Because by me staying silent, I gave up that truth and I let Alex Jones run with it for years and years and years. So in my own personal life, I was able to reclaim that back. That press conference. I, for years, I talked about hating myself for doing that and why? Why would I hate myself for that? Because I laughed? You know, like, I was just paying tribute to a beautiful girl that I was really missing a lot, and I miss so much. And I gave that up because I wasn't willing to stand up for the truth. And so, yeah, so am I changing minds? Am I converting people? I have no idea. Like, to what extent that that's happening. But I've reclaimed the truth. I've got it back. I've taken it away from him. And that was worth every ounce of energy and fight for me.

Robbie Parker. He's the author of "A Father's Fight: Taking on Alex Jones and Reclaiming the Truth About Sandy Hook." That's all for this episode of The Assignment, a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Jesse Remedios, Osman Noor and Dan Bloom. Our senior producer is Matt Martinez. Steve Lickteig is executive producer of CNN Audio and our video team on the road this week, Chris Turner and Andrew Smith. Our video editor was Cole Deines. Our technical director is Dan Dzula. We also had support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks as always to Katie Hinman. And I want to thank you for listening.