Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was not amused by Tucker Carlson’s airing of unseen footage from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on Monday night. He took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to express his anger:
Last night, millions of Americans tuned into one of the most shameful hours we have ever seen on cable television. With contempt for the facts, disregard of the risks, and knowing full well he was lying, lying, to his audience, Fox News host Tucker Carlson ran a lengthy segment last night arguing the Jan. 6 Capitol attack was not a violent insurrection.
By diving deep into the waters of conspiracy and cherry-picking from thousands of hours of security footage, Mr. Carlson told the bold-faced lie that the Capitol attack, which we all saw with our own eyes, was somehow not an attack at all. He tried to argue it was nothing more than a peaceful sightseeing tour. Can you imagine?
…
And he’s going to come back tonight with another segment. Fox News should tell him not to. Fox News, Rupert Murdoch. Tell Carlson not to run a second segment of lies. You know it’s a lie. You’ve admitted it’s a lie. And Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy is every bit as culpable as Mr. Carlson.
…
When people don’t believe elections are on the level, that’s the beginning of the end of this bold experiment in democracy that has gone on for more than 200 years.
…
Let’s fix that for Chuck. Maybe he doesn’t realize that Democrats did the same thing Carlson did. The difference is that Carlson is an opinion journalist and lawmakers are expected to act as arbiters of the truth.
For over two years, Democrats have engaged in one of the most shameful conspiracies in political history. “By diving deep into the waters of conspiracy and cherry-picking from thousands of hours of security footage,” House Democrats presented the American people with a skewed version of what transpired during the hours of the Capitol riot.
“With contempt for the facts, disregard of the risks, and knowing full well” they were “lying, lying,” to the public, the House Jan. 6 Committee conducted a witch hunt to ensure that former President Donald Trump would never again be allowed to run for public office.
The hyper partisan Jan. 6 Committee was composed of seven Democrats and the two House Republicans who hated Trump the most.
Perhaps the most egregious issue with the House hearings was the complete absence of witness cross-examination. Witness testimony was never questioned. Fox News’ host and former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) saw this as a glaring omission. He said, “It is the best way to find the truth. And when there is no cross-examination, you may never know whether you got the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
It is clear from both the House Committee’s footage and the clips aired by Tucker Carlson that the Capitol Police were utterly overwhelmed on Jan. 6. Yet no one has ever explained why, despite FBI warnings of a large, potentially dangerous demonstration, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser declined Trump’s offer of National Guard protection. Both must be asked to explain their decisions under oath.
The National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, a former assistant U.S attorney, published one of the more objective analyses of the Capitol tapes. His take: “Tucker Carlson and the January 6 committee have pushed very different narratives of the riot. Neither one is accurate.” He began:
To the extent that the media–Democrat critique is that Carlson is an opinion journalist who is apt to present a skewed picture, this is the price they must have known they’d have to pay for the January 6 committee. That panel was a blatantly partisan, monochromatically anti-Trump political exhibition that presented the country with a skewed picture, eschewing cross-examination and perspectives that deviated from its relentless theme: “Trump’s incitement to insurrection had our democracy hanging by a thread.
Anyway, as we have lots of occasion to observe, the first rule of politics is: What goes around comes around. If Democrats and their notetakers don’t like this, they should have rethought the January 6 committee, as many of us implored them to do.
McCarthy’s principal disagreement with Carlson involved his portrayal of Jacob Chansley, the Viking-horned one, as having been wronged by the system. He pointed out that Chansley pled guilty to obstructing a congressional proceeding. His lawyers were experienced and they “would have insisted on being shown any potentially exculpatory evidence prior to the guilty plea, and the prosecutors would have been obliged to produce it.” I’m not quite so sure about that, but I digress.
McCarthy argues:
And he pled guilty anyway, because there is nothing exculpatory on the video clips that Carlson has published.
Understand: As a matter of law, what is exculpatory or incriminating is not assessed based on a media narrative. It is assessed based on the specific charges in the case. Here, the charge was that Chansley obstructed Congress. One need not engage in an insurrection, or even a riot, to obstruct Congress. One need only be in a place one has no lawful right to be in, and willfully engage in action that prevents Congress from conducting its proceedings. In that sense, the just-released video is the antithesis of exculpatory evidence; it shows Chansley committing the crime charged.
He also notes that Carlson portrayed Chansley as being “escorted” around the Capitol by police officers. He writes:
Escorted is the benign word being used to describe police who walked alongside one of the most visible intruders in the Capitol, observed what he was doing, and at a certain point allowed him to enter the congressional chamber. It’s been noted that this all seemed downright amicable: The police did not treat Chansley as if he were a threat, and they didn’t place him under arrest or otherwise attempt to subdue him.
Police are trained to de-escalate violent or potentially violent situations when doing so is practicable. When they are grossly outnumbered in powder-keg situations, they are trained not to provoke people who are not menacing them, lest they needlessly ignite mob violence.
Chansley’s 41 month sentence was appropriate as far as McCarthy is concerned.
McCarthy calls out the Democrats for their hyperbole. It was a riot, not an insurrection that left our “democracy hanging by a thread,” he says.
The mindlessly repeated refrain that the riot “prevented the peaceful transition of power” is overwrought. The transition of power was never in doubt. Was the peace disturbed? Yes. …
The video we are now seeing does not establish anyone’s innocence. It does, however, bolster the conclusion that the Democrats’ political messaging about the day has been a duplicitous exercise in mythmaking. Is Tucker Carlson presenting a depiction of January 6 that is overly sympathetic to a violent mob? Probably so . . . but then, the Democrat-dominated January 6 committee put its thumb on the scale as it presented Götterdämmerung.
As I see it, Carlson performed a valuable public service. For 26 months, the Democrats have been using the Jan. 6 riot to prove that Trump and MAGA Republicans represent a serious threat to “our democracy.”
Democrats are correct that democracy is under attack, but they’re lying about its source. The encroaching tyranny that has begun to engulf our once (relatively) free society comes from the Democratic Party.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.