‘They’re Hysterical’: Tucker Carlson Absurdly Claims Washington Post Report is a Rebuttal to His Jan. 6 Documentary
Tucker Carlson appeared on Fox & Friends Monday to promote and defend his new series on the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
A trailer for the three-part series, which airs on Fox Nation, was released last week. It sparked criticism from inside and outside Fox News thanks to its unsubtle reliance on violent imagery and promotion of conspiracy theories (the trailer ends with a woman suggesting the riot was a false flag).
On Fox & Friends, Carlson responded to the criticism — he called the series “rock-solid factually” and “defensible” — and claimed that the outrage was so extreme that even the Washington Post decided to assign 75 reporters to draft up a rebuttal of his show.
“Yesterday the Washington Post put 75 reporters — 75! — on a rebuttal piece to our documentary which they haven’t seen,” Carlson said. “Which means that somewhere orbiting above earth, Jeff Bezos, their boss, called in and said ‘Control the narrative!'”
“So it really tells you everything that they are hysterical in the face of facts being added to this storyline,” he continued. At the end of the segment, he added: “The idea that the Washington Post spent 75 reporters’ time rebutting a trailer tells you they don’t want you to know what actually happened, they’re hysterical, and ask yourself why.”
The Washington Post did publish on Sunday night a massive investigation into the riot — from the “red flags” apparent in the weeks leading up to it, to the bloodshed during the siege itself, and the aftermath of the day. But the report was not a rebuttal to Tucker Carlson’s 120-second trailer.
Post executive editor Sally Buzbee explained in a letter to readers that the project began in late spring. The final product, which Buzbee described as a “definitive account” of the attack, was the result of months of reporting and the work of 75 journalists.
Even without that knowledge, it’s obvious that the Washington Post did not see Tucker Carlson’s trailer on Wednesday night and assign 75 reporters to bust out a 100,000-word response in four days.
Carlson did not read the report, but we have one guess as to where he got the idea that it was all about him: In the “Reliable Sources” newsletter on Sunday, CNN’s Brian Stelter drew a connection between the Post piece and Carlson’s series, unfavorably comparing the “conspiracy theorizing” in the Fox Nation documentary to the “prize-worthy” reporting from the Post.
Could it be that Tucker Carlson, like many in the news industry, reads Reliable Sources but doesn’t click through the links?
