In the week since he began using footage from that day to tell a bogus story about what really happened on January 6, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has been widely denounced across the political spectrum.
Tucker Carlson and January 6
Starting last Monday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, using footage that was presented to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, presented a revisionist history of the January 6 Capitol insurrection, one in which the protest was mostly peaceful and had been falsely portrayed as a violent coup attempt by the media and the January 6 Committee.
As is mostly the case when someone says something on television that is obviously, glaringly untrue, Tucker Carlson has been excoriated from across the political spectrum in the week since.
Thomas Manger, the chief of the Capitol Police, wrote an internal email cited by Politico, in which he ripped Carlson’s broadcast “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attack.”
“The program conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video,” Manger added.
“The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before and during these less tense moments.”
Carlson was also ripped by elected officials of both parties. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), then and now the Senate Republican leader, slammed Carlson and Fox last week.
“It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks,” McConnell said. “Clearly the chief of the Capitol Police, in my view, correctly describes what most of us witnessed firsthand on January 6. So that’s my reaction to it.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who was also present on January 6 and wrote about it in a popular book, unloaded on Carlson in a floor speech last week.
“We saw them come and descend upon this chamber, this Congress, wounding and injuring 150 of our police officers, breaking people’s noses, breaking people’s fingers, putting people in the hospital,” Raskin said in the House. “And already they’re back on the news with [the] big lie, saying, ‘No, no, no, it was a tourist visit.”
“Tucker Carlson’s assault on the truth about January 6 is unconscionable, but more scandalous yet is Kevin McCarthy’s central role in its design,” Raskin added in a tweet.
Tom Joscelyn, a former senior professional staff member with the House January 6 Committee, also criticized Carlson’s broadcasts in a Politico op-ed.
“The premise of his ‘investigation,’ that the USCP footage was being withheld to cover up the full story, was always false. Working with the Select Committee’s members, the investigative team and staffers reviewed the USCP’s recordings, which provided new angles at some key locations,” he wrote. “But it did not change our basic understanding of what transpired. How could it? The riot is one of the most widely covered events in history. There is no dearth of footage from that day.”
He added that the Committee reviewed footage from all sorts of sources, from video produced by documentary filmmakers to the news media, to the rioters themselves.
Of course, Tucker Carlson was in the news last week for a completely different reason: The release of text messages from the Dominion lawsuit which revealed that Tucker Carlson had said he “hates” former President Donald Trump “passionately” and that “we are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights.”
Even the Right Hates Tucker Carlson
This caused him to be bashed from the other direction, by former Fox News host Eric Bolling, who now works for Newsmax. Hosting former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake on his show last week, Bolling addressed Carlson’s comments about Trump.
“I mean, how how do you – like, I think people are giving Tucker a pass on this, but I just can’t. I just can’t get past this, Kari. I can’t understand how a guy who can portray himself as a huge Trump fan on television, saying he hates him passionately is very, very much looking forward to the day he didn’t have to cover Trump being in the White House every day,” Bolling said.
“Hopefully, he’s had a change of heart and realizes that President Trump is the greatest president we’ve ever known and he is the man to turn this around,” Lake replied.
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Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review, and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
