Mitch McConnell Torches Tucker Carlson’s Capitol Riot Revisionism, Stands With Capitol Police
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) joined his fellow Republican lawmakers in renouncing Fox News’ Tucker Carlson over his latest attempt to downplay the storming of the U.S. Capitol.
McConnell spoke with reporters on Tuesday and began by pulling out the email U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger shared with his colleagues in response to Carlson’s latest show. He held the email up to reporters and announced “with regard to the presentation on Fox News last night, I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief of the Capitol Police about what happened on January 6th.”
The Manger email blasted Carlson over the narrative the Fox host tried to create with the more than 40,000 hours of January 6th Capitol surveillance footage House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave him exclusive access to (despite Carlson’s numerous conspiracy theories and whitewashings of the event). During his Monday show, Carlson minimized the violence against law enforcement, vandalism, and law-breaking from the Capitol riot in order to largely depict the mob as “sightseers,” all while claiming they were “right” to believe Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Manger denounced Carlson’s narrative as filled with “offensive and misleading conclusions,” adding “the program conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video. The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments.” McConnell’s agreement with the letter comes as several of his fellow Republican senators have also rejected Carlson’s narrative about January 6th.
As the presser went on, reporters tried to ask McConnell if it was “a mistake” for McCarthy to give the footage to Carlson.
“My concern is how it was depicted, which is a different issue,” McConnell answered. “Clearly, the chief of the Capitol Police, in my view, correctly described what most of us witnessed firsthand on January 6th… It was a mistake in my view for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.”
Reporters tried to follow up, but McConnell refused to say if McCarthy’s decision was “a mistake.”
Watch above via CSPAN.
