On Monday (March 6), Fox News host Tucker Carlson released some of the footage given to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA.) portraying the January 6 riot as peaceful.
Providing Carlson with the tapes was part of the many concessions McCarthy had to make with some House lawmakers to acquire the Speaker’s gavel.
Carlson had suggested McCarthy make the concession during his broadcast, saying the California Republican should “release the January 6 files and video” to ensure everyone could “know what actually happened on January 6, 2021.”
McCarthy carried out Carlson’s suggestion by providing Fox News’s most popular host with 44,000 hours of footage of January 6.
Monday, Carlson, who had promised he would be releasing footage this week, shared footage from the deadly insurrection — and with it amplifying Trump’s narrative that the demonstration was peaceful.
Carlson suggested other media outlets lied about the riot, noting that media accounts portrayed rioters as violent. Yet, the Fox News host insisted there were only a few bad apples, while the rest of the rioters were “sightseers” rather than “insurrectionists,” given how peaceful they were.
The Fox News host asserted that the footage didn’t show a riot or insurrection occurring but “police escorting through the [Capitol] building, including the now-infamous QAnon Shaman.”
Carlson insinuated the White House had kept the more than 44,000 hours of footage from in and around the Capitol was withheld because it “does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection.”
But Carlson didn’t show any footage showing those who have been charged for their violent combat on January 6 carrying out their crimes, nor does it show the 140 officers who were assaulted during the insurrection.
