Officer Fanone Hits Back at Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, Connects Their Rhetoric to Capitol Riot

Officer Michael Fanone hit back at Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham after the Fox News prime time hosts mocked and ridiculed his testimony before a Congressional Select Committee investigating the Capitol attacks on January 6th.

Fanone revealed during Tuesday’s hearing that he’d been “left with psychological trauma and emotional anxiety after having survived such a horrific event.” He also testified that he was beaten unconscious on that day and thought he would be left for dead. Carlson aired a portion of his testimony, then, coming out of it, laughed at the Capitol Police officer’s experience.

Ingraham did a hacky “Angle Awards,” deriding the raw emotion on display throughout the hearing. She gave “Best Performance in an Action role” to Officer Fanone for his impassioned testimony calling out Republicans downplaying the riot.

Appearing on CNN’s New Day Wednesday morning, co-anchor John Berman asked his guest what it was like to watch Fox News hosts making fun of his testimony before Congress and a curious nation of cable news viewers.

Citing previous experience testifying in court, Officer Fanone revealed that he “always felt most comfortable when defense attorneys resorted to theatrical tactics because I knew that they no longer had facts to support their argument, and so they had to insult me, insult my appearance, or, you know, try to chip away at my credibility.”

Fanone then added, “but this case, the facts are the facts. They were supported by hundreds of hours of videotape, evidence, eyewitness testimony, they’re undisputable,” before pivoting back to Fox News hosts, saying “so if they want to disparage me or call me a member of Antifa or talk about my neck tattoos, I couldn’t care less.”

“What does concern me is the fact that you know, those entertainers have an audience, and that audience takes their words and, you know, the rhetoric that they use as more than just entertainment,” Fanone continued. “They think it’s real.”

He then connected the political “entertainment” often described as news or news analysis leading to tragedy.  “That thought process has real-life consequences,” he said of the audience believing Carlson and Ingraham’s rhetoric is real. “And we saw the result of that on January 6th.”

Watch above via CNN.