Or was that the beginning of the right wing embrace of people like Icke and Alex Jones?

I have not dug through the archives but as I recall, I thought these guys loved giving Kent shit about Icke and Jones and then the right embraced them, particularly Jones and went even more into batshit with QAnon and all that shit. Now you can say pretty much anything to a right winger and they will fold it in to their encyclopedia of conspiracy theories.