Tucker and Hawley Try to Whitewash History

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

A couple of weeks ago House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced that he was giving more than 40,000 hours of official House security footage from the January 6th,  2021, insurrection at the US Capitol to Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, so that Carlson could sort through the material and use that footage to enlighten the public on what happened the United States Capitol on that fateful day.  Speaker McCarthy said that he was fulfilling a promise to make the film public, though he never said to whom he had made that promise or if it was part of the reported cache of promises that he made to right-wing extremists in Congress in order to secure enough votes to become Speaker.  He did indicate that even though he was providing the taxpayer-funded tapes to only one (very right-wing) news organization, he might give the same material to other outlets at a later time - might.

Carlson, upon receipt of the 40,000 hours of security footage, had a "large" team of workers review the material and then began airing what he deemed the public needed to see.  Not surprisingly, the material that Carlson shared with his viewers tended to support his long-standing contention that the people swarming the Capitol that day (some of whom entered through broken windows and doors which had been forcibly breached), were basically just tourists, curiosity-seekers, and out-of-towners enjoying a day of sightseeing.

Nine deaths, including a couple of subsequent law enforcement suicides, have been linked to the mayhem that engulfed the Capitol on January 6th, property damage and vandalism were extensive, and arrests have been in the hundreds.   The Capitol Police quickly objected to  Carlson's skewered view of the events of that day and his attempt to rewrite history by cherry-picking footage to mislead the public about the seriousness of the attack.  National politicians also began lining up to speak against Carlson's downplayed retelling of the day's events.  Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said Carlson's version of events that day was 'bullshit,"  Republican senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina were also critical of the way Carlson surmised and presented his findings, and Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, was also unhappy with the Fox take on the events of January 6th and announced he was standing by the Capitol Police and their personal observations about what had occurred.

One GOP senator who was not unhappy with Tucker's Carlson's reimagining of history, however, was Josh Hawley of Missouri.  Hawley, who had been outside of the Capitol on the morning of January 6th, 2021, egging on rioters by posing with his fist in the air, was caught on Capitol security footage a few hours later literally running from protestors.   In Carlson's "review" of the tapes he referred to the tape of Hawley running in the Capitol as the "coward tape," and said it was a "sham" because other senators had been running also.

Carlson's defense of Hawley, lame as it was, seems to have sealed the bromance between th two men because Hawley then began speaking in support of Carlson and said that "Sunshine is always the right answer. "   Hawley's hometown newspaper, Thee Kansas City Star,  had this to say about Hawley's "sunshine" remark.  

"Please.  It's not sunshine to furnish government videos to only one favored propagandist.   Real transparency would have meant making the footage widely available to all of the news outlets that asked for it."

The Kansas City Star also commented on the seriousness of the events of January 6th by noting that more that two dozens residents of Missouri, Hawley's purported home state, have been arrested or charged for their involvement in the insurrection - including at least one member of the Missouri National Guard.  The day was obviously very real and serious to those "tourists."

And the repudiations of Tucker Carlson's whitewashing of the insurrections just keep coming.  CNN's Anderson Cooper seemed to doubt Carlson's ability to accurately gauge the anger and hostility of the crowd when he made the following statement earlier this week:

"The idea of Tucker Carlson being in that mob that day and not wetting his pants is hard to imagine.  I find it hard to understand somebody who has never put himself in harm's way in any capacity for anyone else, or in reporting a story, yet has the audacity to rewrite history.   That's what this is, it is an attempt to rewrite history in what is certainly one of the biggest events in American democracy."

 
Trust fund babies will always be able to afford new pants, but rebuilding democracy would be a much more difficult affair.

Be vigilant, America.  If it comes from Speaker McCarthy and is filtered through Fox News, its best use would probably be as garden fertilizer.  Thom Tillis knows what he is talking about!