House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has reportedly shared over 40,000 hours of U.S. Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection with Fox News host Tucker Carlson. If you thought the right’s attitude toward Jan. 6 was worrisome before, it’s likely about to get worse. Carlson is the most influential MAGA-aligned pundit in the country, and he can use this footage to do huge damage to public memory of one of the most brazen strikes against democracy in American history.
McCarthy turning over the footage to Carlson tells us a great deal about the ongoing evolution of the right in the direction of authoritarianism.
Axios reported Monday that McCarthy’s office has been sharing a huge trove of raw video footage with Carlson since early February, and excerpts from the footage are expected to air in the coming weeks. Carlson appears to have admitted to the arrangement through his statement to Axios. “If there was ever a question that’s in the public’s interest to know, it’s what actually happened on January 6. By definition, this video will reveal it. It’s impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that,” Carlson said.
The problem is that Carlson is not an honest person.
In 2021, the Fox News host aired a “documentary” series about Jan. 6 which peddled false and preposterous claims that Jan. 6 was an inside job by the federal government designed to serve as a pretext for surveillance and repression of the right. As I wrote at the time, the documentary was absurd, but Carlson’s story-telling tactics were clever. He exploited gaps in public knowledge, cherry-picked footage and speculated wildly based on any data points that ran counter to prevailing narratives about the riot. He also used dubious expert testimonials to buttress his claims, such as when he aired a security analyst implying, inaccurately, that organized movement among the protesters was a telltale sign of agents provocateurs….
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