Tucker Carlson spent an entire, commercial-free hour trashing the January 6th committee hearing that was occurring during his show Thursday night, but which Fox refused to air. Not a word about what his congressional aide son was up to that day, though.
“Sworn enemy of lying” (and admitted liar) Tucker Carlson was so full of lies Thursday night about the January 6th insurrection, I lost count. That’s not including all the lies he has previously told on the subject – some that were so egregious, they caused at least three resignations at Fox News.
But the biggest, overarching lie has to be Carlson’s claim that the hearings were not worthy of coverage. Only a lying liar like Carlson would spend a full hour whining about an event he insisted was not be newsworthy. And only an outfit like Fox “News” and people like the Murdochs would let him get away with it.
Don’t forget: Fox “News” has sworn in court that nobody should consider Carlson a trustworthy source of news or facts and it has insisted that anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum represent the “ultimate journalistic integrity and professionalism.” But Fox “News” relegated Baier and MacCallum to the Fox Business Channel for coverage of the hearings and allowed Carlson to rave unimpeded about the ”not newsworthy” event for a full, commercial-free hour. He was followed by more bloviating from Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
Here's how Carlson began his propaganda hour:
CARLSON: You know it tells you a lot about the priorities of a ruling class that the rest of us are getting yet another lecture about January 6th tonight from our moral inferiors, no less.
An outbreak of mob violence, a forgettably minor outbreak by recent standards, that took place more than a year and a half ago, but they've never stopped talking about it.
In the meantime, in the 18 months since January 6, gas prices have doubled. Drug ODs have reached their highest point ever. The U.S. economy is now careening toward a devastating recession at best, and scariest and least noted of all, this country has never in its history been closer to a nuclear war.
Yet, the other networks cannot be bothered to cover any of that tonight. Instead, they've interrupted their regularly scheduled programming to bring you yet another extended primetime harangue from Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney about Donald Trump and QAnon. The whole thing is insulting. In fact, it's deranged and we're not playing along.
This is the only hour on an American news channel that will not be carrying their propaganda live. They are lying, and we are not going to help them do it.
What we will do instead is to try to tell you the truth. We've attempted to do that since the day this happened.
We hated seeing vandalism at the U.S. Capitol a year and a half ago, and we said so at the time, but we did not think it was an insurrection because it was not an insurrection. It was not even close to an insurrection.
Not a single person in the crowd that day was found to be carrying a firearm -- some insurrection. In fact, the only person who wound up shot to death was a protester. She was a 36-year-old military veteran called Ashli Babbitt. Babbitt was just over five feet tall. She was unarmed. She posed no conceivable threat to anyone, but Capitol Hill Police shot her in the neck and never explained why that was justified.
Why didn’t Tucker host his son to tell us the “truth” about January 6?
Tucker Carlson’s son, Buckley Carlson, was in the Capitol on January 6th. He works as an aide to Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who voted to overturn the election results. If the January 6th hearings present such a false version of what happened, why didn’t he have Buckley on to tell us his experiences? Or, at least tell us about how his son had such an easy, “minor” experience that day? I think we know why.
The astounding amount of Jan. 6 dishonesty Carlson worked into just 1:49 of his opening
1. Tucker Carlson’s pretense of being pushed around by the ruling class would be laughable if it wasn’t a key part of Carlson’s poisoned rhetoric. He often pretends to be part of the “regular folks” who watch and, apparently, fall for the dishonest schtick.
FACT CHECK: Carlson grew up wealthy and has said he’s “extraordinarily loaded” from a “number of trust funds.” He now earns millions every year and has been given free rein by the Murdochs to bully and mistreat his colleagues and deliberately endanger anyone it may strike his fancy to do so.
2. Tucker Carlson put together a three-part series on the “forgettably minor outbreak” of January 6 centered on the conspiracy theory that, as Media Matters put it, “the January 6 capitol riot was an intentional setup by one of various parties in order to justify the persecution of conservatives as domestic terrorists and as punishment for supporting President Donald Trump." If January 6th was anything like what Carlson claimed, you’d think he’d want the hearings aired in order to demolish them bit by bit.
3. Carlson’s complaint about the networks not covering inflation and war for a few hours is another load of dishonest baloney. It’s not like the other networks are not covering those issues. In reality, the one network ignoring the news was F***y Tucky’s.
4. Carlson admitted he’s not telling the truth about January 6 when he said, “What we will do instead is to try to tell you the truth. We've attempted to do that since the day this happened.” In other words, the guy who insists he knows January 6th was a nothingburger, whose son was in the Capitol that day, who put together a three-part series on the event and who insists the hearings are full of lies isn't sure he's been telling the truth.
5. Tucker Carlson dishonestly and disingenuously whitewashed the deaths of Capitol police officers and others by saying, “Not a single person in the crowd that day was found to be carrying a firearm -- some insurrection. In fact, the only person who wound up shot to death was a protester.”
FACT CHECK: Three others in the crowd died that day, including one who was probably crushed in a stampede. Five police officers died, four by suicide, afterwards. The one who died of natural causes suffered multiple strokes after his confrontation with the mob. The medical examiner said, “all that transpired played a role."
As for Babbitt, she was not protesting peacefully but shouting “Go, go” as a crowd of rioters broke a glass door leading to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lobby. She then attempted to enter the Capitol through a broken window when she was shot.
The fact that Carlson felt the need to spin and distort the facts tells you everything you need to know about his so-called “attempt” to tell the truth and what side he’s really on. But we’ve already demonstrated many, many times that Tucker Carlson is waging a propaganda war on America.
It also tells you everything you need to know about the Murdochs who not only allow this seditious propaganda but bankroll it.
Media Matters has a good overview of the full show, including this:
[Carlson] hosted a white nationalist-affiliated conspiracy theorist who claimed January 6 was a “clear hoax.” Other guests, including right-wing pundit Ned Ryun, so-called “independent journalist” Michael Tracey, and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, disparaged the hearings as illegitimate and a “show trial” while refusing to engage with the substance.
Funny, he didn't focus on inflation or drug overdoses or the economy.
You can watch Carlson’s full opening lies below, from the June 9, 2022 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
6/12/22 update: The headline originally stated Carlson called Jan. 6 "a forgettable minor outbreak."
doors17, you make a good point, too.
2. Tucker’s " forgettably minor outbreak by recent standards" is a sly reference to BLM protests. Perhaps another way to make Ellen’s point: if Jan. 6th was forgettable, that would make the instigation of it forgettable as well, and yet just yesterday Tucker told us "It’s hard to think of a bigger potential scandal than” the FBI’s instigation of Jan 6. 5: At least a few in the crowd on Jan. 6 admitted to or were found in court to be carrying firearms in the Jan. 6 crowd, e.g. Guy Reffitt. Another example was admitted to by none other than Tucker himself! See around 1:20 in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5CPUpGOAo0
Re: Tucker’s referemce to “our moral inferiors”, I wonder if he includes Putin in his moral superiority club.
Though he might not admit it (see Ellen’s point 1), Tucker doubtless thinks of himself as our intellectual superior as well. Last April, Eric Bolling urged Tucker to “come down from the ivory tower”, which suggested to me that on the Trump right, Tucker may be seen as something of an intellectual. Professor Tucker teaches not just what to think but how to think, e.g. “we did not think it was an insurrection because it was not an insurrection”. Fox viewers have come to accept this sort of thing as a sufficient argument.