Parkland Shooting: Revisiting the “David Hogg/’Alex Vieux’ Interview”

“It’s Not Real”

By James F. Tracy

In the wake of the Parkland shooting a handful of individuals pointed to one of many especially glaring discrepancies in the event’s coverage. An odd video depicts an apparent Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student rehearsing a pro-gun control rant.

She’s doing so at the prompting of David Hogg, the would be high school-attendee and aspiring journalist, on the morning of February 14, 2018. This footage then oddly aired after the “live” Parkland incident that afternoon. To make matters more confusing, the individual goes by “Alex Vieux” in the morning, and “Isabelle Robinson” hours later as the same footage is widely broadcast in the aftermath of the event.

“I really don’t think there’s anything new to say, but there shouldn’t have to be because if you looked around this close and saw everyone just hiding together you would know that this shouldn’t be happening anymore, and that it doesn’t deserve to happen anymore [sic]. And no amount of money should make it more easily accessible to get guns [sic]. Uhm, and that’s that.”

Shortly thereafter the young woman becomes visibly nervous and, when Hogg asks, “Do you want to say anything else?” she demurs from stating her name on camera, “That was more or all articulated in my head.”

Hogg or another party present can then be heard whispering something indecipherable to her. Apparently to set the student at ease, Hogg tells her, “We’ll point it [the camera] at the ground.”

Hogg then states, “This is Alex Vieux. This recording was taken at 9:32 February 14, 2018. Alex, are you OK with me recording this?” The interviewee responds, “Yet, I’m OK with you recording this.”

“Alex’s” remarks are hardly natural or spontaneous. Even so, after Hogg continues to point the camera downward her awkward soliloquy resumes, becoming more pointedly anti-Second Amendment.

“I personally have rallied for, you know, gun rights, she continues,

and, uhm, not necessarily less control [sic] but this experience has definitely changed my viewpoint. I wanted to be an NRA member. I wanted to learn how to hunt. I was always fascinated by guns as a young girl. But this experience was so traumatizing to me to the point where now I can’t even fathom the idea of a gun in my house or on my body [sic]. I did have plans to go to  Nexus gun range to learn how to shoot, but at this point I don’t want to even be behind a gun.

I don’t want to be the person behind a bullet because I don’t want to be the person to point a bullet at someone [sic]. And to have the bullet pointed at me, my school, my classmates, my teachers, my mentors, it’s, just, it’s definitely eye opening to the fact that we need more gun control in our country, because for this to happen, and for people to be so neutralized to it [sic]. I even texted my sisters, “Shooting at my school. I am safe.” They both responded with, “Omg, lol, you’re funny.” And that’s a problem in society and a bigger problem in America, and it needs to be fixed and I believe the most definite way to fix it is by changing our laws when it comes to gun ownership.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel used a small part of the “Alex Vieux” interview footage in a February 15, 2018 video report (brief excerpt at 4:07 below), referring to the interview subject as “Isabelle Robinson.”

One party brought their interpretation of the interview discrepancy to the attention of the Sun-Sentinel via Twitter less than two weeks after the Parkland shooting event, suggesting how there may have been be two interviews of the same party using different names.

https://t.co/mKdTXQ0hMV
At 9:32 AM, before the Parkland school shooting happened, David Hogg interviewed a girl named Alex View about this shooting. At 2:52 PM, he interviewed this same girl about the supposed shooting in progress, but this time she went by Isabelle Robinson. pic.twitter.com/tMLFUC3DZV

— NYC World News (@NYCWorldNews) February 27, 2018

The comment was mocked and the news outlet provided no response to the query. Nor did its editors issue a correction or qualifier to the video report referenced above. In fact, the article remains unaltered from its February 16 publication.

As Harold Saive observes, portions of the same interview transcribed above and derived from the erroneous Sun-Sentinel reportage were likewise unwittingly aired by Newsweek Media Group as part of the broad media extravaganza. He provides a thoughtful overview of the discrepancy:

The Newsweek media group failed to check the content of Hogg’s interview where he states the time of Alex View ’s gun control rant is at 9:32 in the morning – nearly 5 hours before the alleged shooting. The time of 9:32 PM is ruled out since all students had long been evacuated by that time. 

When you listen to the dialog it’s clear the interview is said to be held while “hiding in this closet”. This should mean that the interviews were recorded at around 2:30 PM. But David Hogg slipped and revealed foreknowledge of the shooting drill when he asserted the time of the interviews were at 9:32 on 2/14/18 …

Alex View was obviously reading from a script. It would be awkward for her to be seen looking at prepared text. The background noise clutter and chatter remains the same on both interviews. So, nobody changed location from the phony closet scenario from one interview from the next regardless [of] the B-roll video inserted on top of the Alex View script reading.

This is but one facet of mounting evidence suggesting how at least parts of the Parkland incident are inauthentic. As we noted here shortly after the event, the most powerful (and corrupt) Democratic Party leaders seized upon the event minutes after it transpired.

Stoneman Douglas High students impacted by the event were rapidly mobilized by Democratic political leaders to advocate for the Party’s foremost rallying cries–strengthened gun control laws. News media including CNN and state and federal Democratic Party operatives, including Florida Representative and former Democratic Party National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, advised key Stoneman students in organizing the #NeverAgain movement and arranging protests, including a lobbying trip to Tallahassee to meet with Florida legislators. Parkland, however, is represented by Democratic Representative Ted Deutch, another staunch gun control advocate.

I am closely monitoring the developing situation at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County. The victims are weighing heavy in my heart as is the courage of the first responders on the scene. This senseless violence must end.

— Debbie Wasserman Schultz (@DWStweets) February 14, 2018

After one of the worst school shootings in US history, rather than being thoroughly traumatized, several Parkland students embarked on a massive publicity campaign including the “March For Our Lives” in anticipation of the US 2018 midterm elections.

According to the New Yorker, Wasserman Schultz and her aides touched base with Stoneman junior and NeverAgain leader-in-training Jaclyn Corin on February 15–one day after the shooting. “Conversations with state representatives followed, and preliminary arrangements were made to bus a hundred Douglas students and fifteen chaperones to Tallahassee to address the state legislature. Yesterday, I asked Corin if she had been politically active before the shooting. ‘Not even a little bit,’ she said.”

Corin appears especially astute having absolutely no previous experience in issue-oriented politics. “The action has been so quick,” the 17-year-old told the Naples Daily News. “And that’s necessary because this is a fresh and open wound and we can’t let it close up. We need to do something about it before it just disappears like it always has.”

Robinson became one of the many Parkland/MSD players, being profiled by CNN and lending her name to an op-ed published in the New York Times, where she claimed to befriend alleged gunman Nikolas Cruz.

More recently the young woman known as Robinson was featured in an impressive music video production, “Carry You On,” commemorating the Parkland shooting event and released just prior to the 2018 Midterm Elections.

At the end of the day how much of this is real? When Robinson was approached at the “March For Our Lives” event in March 2018 by online researchers and asked to explain the time and identity discrepancies of the February 14 video, one of the two women accompanying her stated, “Alex Vieux is a different girl.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfJ6eEL5qnk

Pressed further, Robinson finally responds, “He edited it. It’s not real.” She smiles, half waves, then hastily ushers her friends away.

Not real indeed.

H/t Tony Mead

See also: 

In Search of Nexus: The Organization Behind the Parkland Shooting’s Zachary Cruz and Migrant Caravan Lawsuit

The Parkland Puzzle: How the Pieces Fit Together

Sandy Hook Promise Rolls Out Nationwide Surveillance Program

Broward County Sheriff’s Deputy Dead at 42