“A lie.”
“Bulls---.”
“Dangerous.”
“Disgusting.”
Those are just some ways Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s sanitized re-framing of Jan. 6 is being described — by other Republicans.
In case you missed it, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave Carlson — a host even Fox News lawyers admit cannot be trusted to traffic in “actual facts” — exclusive access to select footage from Jan. 6.
He did that, presumably, because he knew what Carlson would likely do with it: Lie.
And he was right. The way the footage is edited by Carlson, it appears duplicitously to support his narrative the attack on the Capitol that day was not, in fact, an insurrection, but instead merely a bunch of “sightseers,” most of whom were “peaceful,” “orderly and meek.” As such, Carlson only played clips from Jan. 6 that conveniently, you know, left out the violence.
Never mind the Actual Facts that several people died in that “peaceful” protest, dozens others were injured, rioters broke into the building yelling “Hang Mike Pence!” and looking for then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to, according to them, overturn the election.
Never mind the Actual Facts that we have hours of unedited video showing the very real violence of that day, plus reams of court documents in which eyewitnesses and law enforcement describe the horrific events of that day — as well as confessions and guilty pleas from a number of the perpetrators.
For Carlson, none of these Actual Facts matter, nor will they get in the way of his ludicrous alternative reality show during which he’s long been insisting — without evidence — the 2020 election was stolen.
But outside of Carlson’s fictitious Earth 2, few are buying it.
A number of GOP lawmakers aren’t holding back about the absurdity of Carlson’s revisionist history.
“To somehow put [Jan. 6] in the same category as a permitted peaceful protest is just a lie,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota.
“I think it’s bulls---,” said Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. “I was here. I was down there, and I saw maybe a few tourists, a few people who got caught up in things. But when you see police barricades breached, when you see police officers assaulted, all of that — if you were just a tourist you should’ve probably lined up at the visitors’ center and came in on an orderly basis.”
“I thought it was an insurrection at that time. I still think it was an insurrection today,” said Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota.
Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah was also pointed: “It’s a very dangerous thing to do, to suggest that attacking the Capitol of the United States is in any way acceptable and it’s anything other than a serious crime, against democracy and against our country. And people saw that it was violent and destructive and should never happen again. But trying to normalize that behavior is dangerous and disgusting.”
Even Fox News seems to be shying away from Carlson’s freakish sideshow act. As Mediaite’s Colby Hall pointed out, the rest of the network’s shows completely ignored the revelations, seemingly opting not to boost the lame and embarrassing gimmick.
Then there’s this scathing statement from the family of Brian Sicknick, the police officer who died one day after defending the Capitol against violent insurrectionists:
“The Sicknick Family would love nothing more than to have Brian back with us and to resume our normal lives. Fictitious news outlets like Fox and its rabid followers will not allow that. Every time the pain of that day seems to have ebbed a bit, organizations like Fox rip our wounds wide open again and we are frankly sick of it. Leave us the hell alone and instead of spreading more lies from Supreme Leader Trump, why don’t you focus on real news?”
So, who is this rotten, fetid diet of septic sludge for, then?
The cult of Carlson — the not small number of Fox viewers who refuse to accept the reality of 2020 (and myriad others, for that matter) and instead prefer to live in a Trumpy metaverse of delusion, distraction and false promises.
Carlson, despite verifiably knowing better, is all too happy to keep his viewers in this stupor of suspended reality, regularly doping them up with an intravenous shot of bogus conspiracy theories, junk science, lies and illusions meant to keep them angry and afraid, and most of all, tuned in.
What he’s doing obviously isn’t news. I’m not even sure it could be called entertainment. My friend John Avlon calls it “angertainment,” which I quite like, and I’ve called it fan fiction and agitprop on numerous occasions. Republican lawmakers call it dangerous and disgusting.
For Tucker’s viewers, it’s also clearly a drug. And if Fox News were at all a responsible actor, it would stage an intervention.
S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.
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