Mar.08

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You've Aggravated Everyone and His Mother, Tucker

Fox entertainer Tucker Carlson was presumably delighted that he got the exclusive "scoop" when it comes to broadcasting the footage from the 1/6 insurrection. Given the response to his first "report," however, he might now be regretting his supposed good fortune.

As we noted yesterday, Carlson offered up a propagandistic take on 1/6 that was utterly counterfactual. His staff found some footage of people who were not, say, breaking into the Capitol through windows or raiding Nancy Pelosi's office or fighting with cops, and he used that to support the narrative that the insurrection was just a peaceful demonstration that got "slightly chaotic."

As it turns out, people were listening and watching. And most of them were not amused. A non-exhaustive list of where the anti-Carlson blowback came from yesterday:

• Congressional Democrats: This, of course, comes as no surprise. Taking the lead for his colleagues was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who delivered a speech on the floor of the Senate that excoriated both Carlson and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). The conclusion:

  I condemn Mr. Carlson for siding with the enemies of democracy. I strongly condemn Speaker McCarthy's actions and fiercely oppose his decision to share this footage with Carlson.
  
  I urge Fox News to order Carlson to cease propagating the big lie on his network and to level with their viewers about the truth. The truth! Behind the efforts to mislead the public conduct like theirs is just asking for another January 6th to happen.

  Schumer, of course, is not generally known for his fiery rhetoric. But even he is driven into a rage by Carlson.
  
  
• Capitol Police: The current chief of the Capitol PD is Thomas Manger, and he absolutely blew his top, since downplaying the insurrection denigrates the service of CPD officers in general and the death of Brian Sicknick in particular. The Chief sent an e-mail to his entire force yesterday; it begins like this:

  Last night an opinion program aired commentary that was filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attack. The opinion program never reached out to the Department to provide accurate context.
  
  One false allegation is that our officers helped the rioters and acted as 'tour guides.' This is outrageous and false. The Department stands by the officers in the video that was shown last night. I don't have to remind you how outnumbered our officers were on January 6. Those officers did their best to use de-escalation tactics to try to talk to rioters into getting each other to leave the building
  
  The program conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video. The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments.

  The rest of the e-mail is just as angry. Manger also said that he did not approve the airing of the vast majority of the footage Carlson showed.
  
  
• Senate Republicans: Senate Republicans suspect, quite rightly, that this nonsense will rebound to the detriment of the Republican Party. And so, many of them were not happy yesterday. Taking the lead was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who had a copy of the e-mail Manger send to the CPD. McConnell waved the e-mail around in front of reporters, and declared: "with regard to the presentation on Fox News last night, I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief of the Capitol Police about what happened on January 6th." North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) was even more blunt, describing Carlson's presentation as "bull**it" when talking to a reporter. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said: "I thought it was an insurrection at that time. I still think it was an insurrection today." Mitt Romney (R-UT) added: "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."
  
  
• House Republicans: The GOP members of the House are not being quite as open in their criticism, but most of them aren't happy, either. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) spoke for many of his colleagues who would not go on the record, decreeing: "It's definitely stupid to keep talking about this... So what is the purpose of continuing to bring it up unless you're trying to feed Democrat narratives even further?"
  
  
• Foxers: The other entertainers at Fox are not willing to turn against one of their own, at least not on the air. But it was noticeable yesterday that none of the other shows on the channel were talking about the 1/6 footage. In fact, they clearly didn't want to touch the story with a 10-foot pole.

Naturally, all of this has left Kevin McCarthy holding the bag, to a large extent. He didn't really want to release the footage, but he was (and is) beholden to the Freedom Caucus nutters. Yesterday, the Speaker told reporters that he doesn't regret releasing the footage to Carlson, and that he's glad to be an advocate for transparency. Uh, huh. Is there anyone who actually believes that? You can always tell when McCarthy is lying, because his lips are moving.

As to Carlson, he also doubled down, taking apparent delight in what he called "congressional hysteria" over his report. Of course, he's an even bigger liar than McCarthy is (except maybe in text messages to Fox colleagues). Carlson's self-preservation instincts are very strong, and he knows enough to know that: (1) it's not wise to piss off the entire Republican establishment, (2) if the entire Republican establishment is this angry, then the base (i.e., Carlson's viewers) are likely also unhappy. Further, rewriting the history of that day is just toting the water for Donald Trump, and yesterday, thanks to the latest Dominion filing, it was also revealed that Carlson "passionately" hates Trump. So, it would not be terribly surprising if Carlson's first segment on the 1/6 footage ends up being his only segment on the 1/6 footage. (Z)