When the public first learned that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy provided Fox News’ Tucker Carlson with exclusive access to thousands of hours of sensitive Jan. 6 security camera footage, the Republican leader found it relatively easy to avoid questions. After all, members were away from Capitol Hill, so it wasn’t as if the Californian could be pressed for answers in a congressional corridor.
When McCarthy finally addressed the subject, he did so initially through a fundraising appeal — reinforcing concerns that the entire gambit was little more than a political scheme — followed by brief comments to The New York Times that made very little sense.
This week, however, lawmakers returned to work, creating a new opportunity to get a straight answer from the House speaker. NBC News reported:
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on Tuesday defended his decision to hand over tens of thousands of hours of security video from the Jan. 6 insurrection to Fox News host Tucker Carlson. … “So [Carlson will] have an exclusive, then I’ll give it out to the entire country,” McCarthy said.
By any fair measure, the GOP leader has had plenty of time to prepare a defense, and he’s apparently come up with a variety of talking points. The trouble is, he hasn’t yet come up with anything persuasive. Let’s take McCarthy’s latest arguments one at a time.
“First of all, we didn’t hand over anything.” The point of this comment was apparently to emphasize that the House speaker’s office didn’t literally hand over recordings to the controversial television personality. That’s true, but it’s not altogether relevant: Making sensitive footage available to Carlson, despite (or perhaps because of?) his ridiculous record of commentary on the Jan. 6 attack, is just as bad as turning over tapes.
“Tucker was interested. … Tucker Carlson has been interested about it, so I let him come in and see it.” I don’t doubt that the host wanted access to the sensitive…
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