WASHINGTON — A handful of Senate Republicans pushed back on conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday after he characterized the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as “mostly peaceful chaos,” with North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis blasted those comments as “nonsense”. ,
Carlson, a popular but controversial figure on Fox, made the comments to his millions of viewers Tuesday night when he aired select clips of never-before-seen surveillance footage of the January 6 Capitol riots and violent riots that injured 140 police officers. underestimated. during the hour-long fight
“I think it’s nonsense,” Tillis told reporters at the Capitol.
“I was here. I was down there and I probably saw some tourists, some people who were caught in things,” he said. “But when you see police barricades being broken down, when you see police officers getting assaulted, all of that… If you were just a tourist you probably should have stood in line at the visitors center and Should have come on a systematic basis.”
Tillis said Carlson’s portrayal was “inexcusable” and compared it to those that downplayed the fire and “devastation” during the 2020 protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man. Happened after
Conservative Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said he was at the Capitol on January 6 and strongly rejected Carlson’s portrayal that day as “some rowdy peaceful protest of the Boy Scouts.”
“I think it is a crime against the police limits to break the glass windows and doors to get into the United States Capitol. I think especially when you get into the chambers, when you start opening the members’ desks are, when you’re standing on their balcony — to somehow put it in the same category as, you know, allowing peaceful protest is just a lie,” Cramer said.
“I think it doesn’t do any good for the narrative,” he said.
On his show Monday night, Carlson said that while there were some bad apples, most of the January 6 rioters were peaceful, calling them “watchers”, not “rebels”.
“The footage does not show any mutiny or riots taking place,” he added. “Instead it shows police escorting people through the building.”
When asked whether Speaker Kevin McCarthy had made a mistake by giving thousands of hours of January 6 footage exclusively to Carlson, Cramer said the speaker could have given it “to all sources equally”, rather than being “conservative”. Especially good at entertainment.”
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said, “It’s really sad to see Tucker Carlson derail like this,” adding that he is “joining a series of shock jocks who are letting America down and feeding a lie.”
“The American people saw what happened on January 6th.” Romney told reporters. “They’ve seen people who were injured, they’ve seen 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 happened. It’s so absurd. It’s bullshit.”
Romney said, “It is a very dangerous thing to do, to suggest that an attack on the United States Capitol is acceptable in any way and is anything other than a serious crime against democracy and against our country.” And people saw that it was violent and destructive and should never happen again. But trying to normalize that behavior is dangerous and disgusting.”
Sen. Mike Rounds, R.S.D. also dismissed Carlsen’s comments that the day was peaceful.
“I was there on January 6. I saw what happened. I saw the result. There was violence on January 6.
“I think the footage that is available should be made available to all networks and everyone should be able to see for themselves what kind of chaos we had that day.”
The top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R.S.C. said the January 6 committee inquiry should be conducted, including why the panel did not pay much attention to the bombs planted in the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee. Committee headquarters the night before the Capitol assault. But, he added: “We don’t want to whitewash January 6th.”
Graham said, “I think the January 6th committee had a biased view of things and I would like to know more about that day and before.” “But I’m not interested in whitewashing the Covid lab theory, and I’m not interested in whitewashing January 6.”
Carlson said his team is examining 44,000 hours of footage from Jan. 6 and will release segments of its event to demonstrate that the attempt to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory was not violent — a claim that Democrats, many Republicans, police officers at the Capitol, and others vehemently reject that day.
“Deadly Revolt — everything about that phrase is a lie,” Carlson said on his show Monday night. “There was very little organized or violent about January 6th. Surveillance video from inside the Capitol shows mostly peaceful chaos.
What did not appear on Carlson’s program Monday evening was video showing police and rioters engaged in extended violent clashes. About 140 police officers were attacked that day.
Syed Asghar Contribution,
