Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson is not a journalist, but his recent work on the video footage of the controversial January 6, 2021 incident at the U.S. Capitol building disrupted the false narratives promoted by both the liberal mainstream media and Democratic Party.
Carlson’s expose, where he and his staff combed through 40,000-plus hours of video footage, eliminated much of the remaining credibility surrounding the Left’s narratives. Carlson received the video footage from Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
He unveiled selective footage not seen by the public, such as tracking the movements of the now-famous “Q-Anon Shaman.” The so-called shaman, whose real name is Jacob Chansley, was escorted by U.S. Capitol Police officers and was not violent in the aired footage to the point that officers even opened a door for him to walk around the U.S. Capitol.
Carlson brought up the Ray Epps theory, where some alleged that a man named Ray Epps instigated the riot in his role as an undercover federal agency officer.
He also dug into the circumstances surrounding the death of U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick. Sicknick died of natural causes, according to a medical examiner’s report, but reporting at the time of the riot alleged he was hit with a fire extinguisher and later died as a result of his injuries. According to Carlson’s selective editing of footage, Fox News viewers saw Sicknick walking around normally.
As you can tell, there are a lot of unanswered questions about the U.S. Capitol riot that the partisan, Democratic Party-created commission should have answered months ago but did not do so.
For two years, the media and Democrats claimed that the incident was an “insurrection” and an attempted coup. They created a partisan commission to investigate the incident and the media jumped on board with it, to the point that a mainstream media producer advised the commission on how to proceed and grab media attention.
For context, an insurrection or coup is an attempted armed takeover of government. Few, if any, of the rioters were armed.
Contrast the events of January 6, 2021 to the 1859 Harper’s Ferry raid by abolitionist John Brown. Brown and his party seized weapons at a federal armory in the West Virginia city and violently resisted federal soldiers, with the goal of arming slaves to rebel against the pro-slavery southern states. By all measures, Brown’s raid on federal property was an attempted insurrection and the January 6 riot was not on the same level as Brown’s raid.
Based on the facts available at the time, some Americans viewed the incident at the U.S. Capitol as a riot or violent protest. For example, Americans doubted the false narratives because none of the rioters were armed with handguns or other similar weapons. Yet the same rioters were violent and chose to assault U.S. Capitol Police officers, which cannot be ignored or dismissed.
Adding to this, polling showed that Americans did not consider the Capitol riot as a ground-shaking event in U.S. history. It did not become a political issue at the ballot box in the 2022 midterm elections.
Yet Carlson’s expose didn’t stop some Republicans from condemning the release of the footage. At least one Senate Republican, Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, said he wished McCarthy had released the video footage to all media outlets.
It is ironic that Cramer said this because the media had been misleading the public for over two years and it is likely why McCarthy only released the footage to Carlson.
It is inexcusable that some of the rioters trespassed on federal property, destroyed or stole federal property, and assaulted police officers. But Carlson exposed the flimsy narrative for what it was: a partisan attempt to change history.
