Tucker Carlson suggested that those who called last week’s siege of the U.S. Capitol an “insurrection” were the bigger threat to America than the armed protesters who called for the murder of Vice President Mike Pence and who actually murdered a Capitol police officer.
The Washington Post describes some of what happened last week:
Secret Service officers eventually spirited Pence to a room off the Senate floor with his wife and daughter after rioters began to pour into the Capitol, many loudly denouncing the vice president as a traitor as they marched through the first floor below the Senate chamber.
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Once inside, they used pipes, flagpoles and other weapons to shatter windows and break furniture. One police officer later died of injuries sustained during the onslaught. Dozens of officers were wounded, including some who were struck with a fire extinguisher and another who was dragged down a set of steps and attacked by the crowd.
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At one point, a group of rioters began chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” as they streamed into the main door on the east side of the Capitol.
But what really bothers Carlson, it seems, is calling this horrific event an "insurrection" or "racism."
Carlson said, “It was not an act of racism. It was not an insurrection. It wasn’t an armed invasion by a brigade of dangerous white supremacists. It wasn’t, those are lies.”
He also suggested a false equivalency between the “lies” and the mob violence:
CARLSON: We're also against lying. Political propaganda is its own form of violence. It destroys people's minds. In the end, it enslaves them. …
Why are they demanding that you believe those lies? You should wonder about that. When your doctor claims that your broken arm is stage four pancreatic cancer, you need a second opinion. When he demands that you get chemotherapy, you need to run away, because something very dark is going on. And, indeed, something dark is going on right now.
According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of insurrection is “an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.” That’s clearly what happened at the Capitol last week, whether Carlson wants to admit it or not.
CNN’s Brianna Keilar gave Tucker a vocabulary lesson last week on the meaning of the words “insurrection” and “revolt” after he tried to whitewash the insurrection as a “political protest that got out of hand.” Apparently, it struck a nerve because Carlson responded with a torrent of childish insults about Keilar but not one shred of evidence to refute anything she said.
There was plenty of white supremacy in the mob, too. Which is undoubtedly one reason Carlson feels such a need to whitewash that behavior, too.
Oh, and speaking of lies causing violence, we have yet to see Carlson apologize for deliberately endangering two New York Times journalists with lies.
You can watch Carlson gaslight viewers as he pretends to be a truthteller below, from the January 14, 2021 Tucker Carlson Tonight, via Media Matters.
This is not a free speech issue – it is sedition, treason, and attempted murder, not necessarily in that order.