For the second day in a row, Fox News prime time star Tucker Carlson used his platform as host of the second most-watched show in cable TV news to repeatedly tell viewers outright lies about the Jan. 6, 2021 attack.
Among other things, Carlson once again claimed no guns or other weapons were found among the rioters who attempted to violently force congress to overturn the 2020 election on Donald Trump’s behalf. He also claimed that the congressional investigation into the attacks “selectively” edited video and lied about “protests” for “propaganda” purposes.
The comments come amid widespread, and surprisingly bipartisan, condemnation of Carlson. On Monday’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Carlson made multiple false claimss related to the Jan. 6 attacks, and also deployed selectively edited footage to misrepresent them as a peaceful protest. And yes, Carlson also repeated the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
This resulted in widespread criticism even from fellow Republicans, among them Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Naturally, Carlson lashed out at those Republicans on Tuesday night’s episode — read more about that here — but he also jumped right back into the Jan. 6 falsehoods.
“We haven’t answered every question about what actually happened on Jan. 6, far from it. There’s so many mysteries from that day,” he said at one point on Tuesday, video of which you can see at the top of the page (courtesy of @acyn on Twitter).
“One thing we know for certain is that the story they told you about it, a pat tale of ‘good versus evil,’ an ‘insurrection’ with no guns that took place at the U.S. Capitol, those were lies and those were lies told for a very specific purpose. Of course, the people in power wanted more power, and they got it on the basis of those lies.”
Speaking of ‘of course,’ of course the actual lies came here via Carlson. Setting aside the fact that Donald Trump, as president on Jan. 6, was by definition the most powerful person in the country, Carlson’s claim that no weapons were present is just false.
Video evidence, court documents and eyewitness testimony all prove that dozens of people who participated in the attack were armed with guns, knives and other weapons. Which, among other things, were used to assault law enforcement officers on the scene.
Later in the episode, Carlson said, “In free countries, governments do not lie about protests as a pretext to gain more power for themselves. They don’t selectively edit videos for propaganda services, and then lie about them in fake hearings and show trials. But that’s exactly what happened.”
These claims about the Jan. 6 hearings are, in fact, false, but Carlson has himself consistently used selectively edited video to advance actual lies about the attack — as demonstrated above.
These comments also come after the latest round of documents released from the ongoing defamation suit filed by Dominion, against Fox News which, as it happens, all tell a very different story than the one Carlson now regularly presents to viewers.
Most notably, these documents show that on Jan. 4, 2021, Carlson told someone in a text that he hated Donald Trump “Passionately.” And other communications prove that Carlson, as he told fellow Fox News star Laura Ingraham, didn’t believe Trump’s claims that the election was stolen.
