Quote:
Originally Posted by berryberry
|
That's completely laughable. Fucker Carlson is the one of the biggest lying pieces of shit out there. This was a conplete misrepresentation of the facts of January 6. To cherry-pick segments of the video to appease his extremist radical far-right followers is just another in his reprehensible fake attempt at journalistic integrity.
Only the true extremist see this as justification for there misguided and foolish believes. They are easily lead my liars and con-men. But then again, how foolish and dimwitted is it to believe the lied and bullshit to be there in the first place.
and some Republicans aren't either
Echoing the risk of reputational (and perhaps electoral) liability raised by Schatz, GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw (Texas) also criticized Carlson's segment, explaining, "I don't really have a problem with making it all public. But if your message is then to try and convince people that nothing bad happened, then it's just gonna make us look silly."
"It's definitely stupid to keep talking about this," he added. "So what is the purpose of continuing to bring it up unless you're trying to feed Democrat narratives even further?"
"The American people saw what happened on Jan. 6," Republican Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) told the press on Tuesday. "They've seen the people that got injured, they saw the damage to the building. You can't hide the truth by selectively picking a few minutes out of tapes and saying this is what went on. It's so absurd. It's nonsense." Romney, who has positioned his tenure in the Senate as a conservative foil to the ascendant MAGA wing of the party, added that he felt "really sad to see Tucker Carlson go off the rails like that."
North Carolina's GOP Sen. Thom Tillis was even less circumspect with his reaction to Carlson's broadcast, telling reporters on Tuesday he thought it was "bulls--t."
"To somehow put [the riot] in the same category as a permitted peaceful protest is just a lie," Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told CNN's Manu Raju. Cramer lamented that McCarthy hadn't shared the footage with multiple outlets and journalists equally, instead choosing to give it to "one who is particularly good at conservative entertainment."
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) couched his criticism of Carlson in a broader partisan swipe against the previous work of the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 attack, explaining that the congressional body "had a partisan view of things, and I'd like to know more about what happened that day and the day before. But I'm not interested in whitewashing the COVID lab theory, and I'm not interested in whitewashing Jan. 6."
Asked whether he objected to McCarthy giving the footage to Carlson to begin with, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pivoted away from criticizing his colleague to instead highlight the "mistake" in depicting it "in a way that's completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official at the Capitol thinks."
Indeed, the rarity of so many Republicans being willing to call out Carlson and Fox News itself suggests the host may have overplayed his hand by doubling down on the conspiracy-mongering he was shown to have derided in private. That GOP lawmakers feel they can criticize a network ostensibly powerful enough to make or break their careers is a sign that Fox's influence may be waning within conservative circles. As MSNBC's Steve Benen wrote, it's hard to see what return on investment Fox is getting from Carlson's decision. "To be sure, Jan. 6 denialists were delighted with Carlson's program last night," Benen said. "But for every other mainstream observer, the coverage wasn't investigative journalism; it was a theatrical production put on by an unreliable narrator."
"This deserves mockery because it is a lame and transparent effort on the part of the 20 percent to 25 percent of the population (and their Fox News cheerleaders) which endorses and supports the insurrection to repackage their degenerate values as a kind of evidentiary breakthrough," wrote Josh Marshall in an essay for Talking Points Memo.
"The insurrection was traitorous and disgusting," he continued. But "clumsily edited video of an insurrectionist putting back upright a flipped over chair is hilarious because it's so stupid. We should treat it as such."
