Tucker Carlson’s Absurd Rewrite of Jan. 6 Is a Pathetic Revival of a Very Old Joke

Screenshot via Fox News.

If all press is indeed good press, then Tucker Carlson is having a very good day.

But when even his own Fox News colleagues are refusing to touch his Monday night Jan. 6 commentary and he’s been the target of widespread condemnation from congressional Republicans (including some staunchly conservative members), then we might finally be at a point where Carlson’s slanted take on the world is taking on the radioactivity it so sorely deserves. And in a political era where former President Donald Trump screeches “fake news” about accurate reports on his wrongdoing and millions of Americans watch Carlson’s show every weekday night, it’s important to not just point out how the Fox News host is lying, but also how he’s distorting known truths.

The Monday night episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight featured selected clips from the more than 40,000 hours of video footage from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had allowed him to review.

After claiming that the protesters were “right” to be “angry” about the 2020 election being stolen, Carlson then went on to claim that the video he was showing “demolishes that claim” that the events that day were an insurrection or riot.

As clips aired of people walking through the Capitol hallways not committing violence, Carlson acknowledged that “many people” entered the Capitol building but only “a small percentage of them were hooligans” who “committed vandalism,” describing the “overwhelming majority” as “peaceful,” and “ordinary and meek.”

“These were not insurrectionists, they were sightseers,” Carlson declared.

This is a steaming pile of rancid bovine excrement.

Besides the fact that every single person who was not a member of Congress, congressional staff, law enforcement, media, etc. was violating federal law (the Capitol was closed to visitors for pandemic and security reasons), the rioters had to knock down barricades, physically battle police officers, and smash doors and windows to get inside.

“Even allowing for Carlson’s point that many of those on tape are not engaging in active vandalism, this is an odd description of people who broke through a cordon of hundreds of police to trespass and disrupt a constitutional proceeding,” wrote David A. Graham at The Atlantic.

At this point more than two years after the Capitol riot, besides the live footage we all watched on Jan. 6, 2021, we’ve seen countless hours of video footage as shown by news reports, court filings, and the work of the House Select Committee – plus many media interviews and sworn testimony from the police officers who put their lives on the line that day.

For Carlson to argue that video of nonviolent moments somehow erases the many, many hours of brutal violence is the height of absurdity and journalistic malpractice. Fox News lawyers previously successfully defended Carlson against a slander and defamation lawsuit by arguing that he engages in “exaggeration” and “non-literal commentary” and is “not stating actual facts,” but what he did with his Monday show was not just a series of flat-out lies but an especially pernicious type of lies.

I’ll risk the inevitable Godwin’s Law enforcers to point out that Adolf Hitler’s watercolor painting has zero relevance in how history judges the horrific mass genocide he launched, but perhaps the better metaphor is an old joke about the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

“Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” It’s a shocking question that brings to mind the ghoulish image of someone having the audacity to ask Mary Todd Lincoln for a review of the play she and the president were watching the evening of April 14, 1865 at Ford’s Theatre.

That of course is the date and location of Lincoln’s assassination by the actor John Wilkes Booth.

There are contemporaneous reports that the Lincolns were having a pleasant evening watching the play, a comedic farce called Our American Cousin, with the couple laughing at various lines and holding hands as they enjoyed a night out — but that enjoyment all ended the moment the coward Booth fired a bullet into the president’s head.

It seems stupid to even have to write that previous sentence, but all day long Trump supporters and Carlson’s fans have been furiously tweeting that the video footage he showed Monday “proves” that Jan. 6 was a nothingburger, and that it somehow “exculpates” the Jan. 6 defendants. Trump himself responded to Carlson’s show by demanding that the defendants should all be immediately released, in several heavily-capitalized rants on Truth Social.

But just as the theatre audience having a lovely evening earlier doesn’t erase Booth’s treasonous shot, the fact that there is video of Jan. 6 protesters not committing violence does not erase the very real other video showing there was violence – lots of it!

It’s like Tucker heard that old joke about asking Mrs. Lincoln for a theater review, and decided to twist it in the sickest way possible, to push the demented claim that reports of the Lincolns enjoying the play before he was murdered means that no crime was committed that night and her grief was not justified.

What Carlson did on Monday isn’t just lying and twisting the truth about the violence that did actually occur, but diabolically attempting to smear anyone who has justified concerns about Jan. 6 and the lies that led up to it, and dismissing the very real pain of the roughly 150 police officers who were wounded in the attack and the four who committed suicide, plus all of their traumatized and grieving loved ones.

Many commentators have questioned how Carlson can justify calling himself a “journalist.” After Monday’s show, the question should be considered settled – he can’t. Whether Fox News can continue to justify calling itself a “news” network depends on whether they have the backbone to do anything to rein in Carlson, or if they prefer the ratings his vile propaganda continues to deliver.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.