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Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s deceptive framing of Jan. 6 footage for his millions of viewers is prompting outrage from key figures in the congressional investigation into the Capitol attack.
We got in-depth reaction Wednesday from House Jan. 6 committee chief investigative counsel Tim Heaphy, who told me that it’s “flat-out wrong” to frame the deadly insurrection as “a peaceful protest with people waving flags and taking smiling selfies.”
Adding to that strong response, in a Wednesday tweet, committee member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., blasted Carlson as well as Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California, who shared exclusive hours of Jan. 6 footage with the Fox News host (which, as Heaphy explained, raises serious security issues, among other things).
Indeed, Raskin said McCarthy's "central role" was even "more scandalous":
In an impassioned speech from the House floor Wednesday, Raskin decried Republican lawmakers and right-wing media pundits downplaying the events of Jan. 6.
"We saw them come and descend upon this chamber, this Congress, wounding and injuring 150 of our police officers, breaking people's noses, breaking people's fingers, putting people in the hospital," Raskin said of the rioters. "And already they're back on the news with [the] big lie, saying, 'No, no, no, it was a tourist visit.'"
Of course, Carlson’s shady attempt to rewrite history comes as his network is facing $1.6 billion-dollar legal exposure over alleged defamation in the Dominion Voting Systems suit for promoting Donald Trump's election fraud lies that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. (Fox News has denied all wrongdoing.)
That legal proceeding's potential consequences for the "news" network may well help dictate whether, as Raskin put it in his tweet, “McCarthy and Carlson become the Orwellian editors of our past or the authoritarian authors of our future.”