Tucker Carlson: The commitment to lying in Washington is deep and bipartisan
WARNING-GRAPHIC FOOTAGE: Fox News host Tucker Carlson fires back at critics who are outraged over his airing previously hidden footage of the January 6 Capitol breach on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
One of the hallmarks of people who are telling the truth, in case you were wondering how to tell the difference, is that people who are telling the truth are calm. You don't wave their hands around and make wild accusations. They don't need to do that. It's enough to say what they know and if honest people turn out to be wrong about something they have claimed, they'll admit it. They don't double down on false. They made a mistake and that's okay. It's not like they're claiming to be God.
Liars behave differently. Liars are touchy, sometimes to the point of hysteria. They're hiding something. That's the whole point of lying and they're worried you're going to find out what it is. Liars are fragile because over time, lying makes you weak and afraid and has the same effect on countries by the way.
We're living through one of those clarifying moments. Actually, we're thankful for it, where we're learning exactly who the liars are. On Monday, we showed you unreleased videotape from January 6. It proved, that tape proved, that three of the most important claims our leaders have made about that day were untrue. Their claims were lies. We were not shocked to discover that. We knew there was a reason that congressional leaders had been hiding the tape and that reporters in Washington weren't demanding to see it. They were lying to us obviously. That's why you hide things.
But what was actually surprising, what we can't quite get over even now, is how they responded when they were caught lying. They didn't seem embarrassed. They didn't apologize. They weren't even curious to learn more about what actually happened on January 6. Let's see the tape. No, they don't want to see it. They exploded in rage. And then as liars tend to do, they doubled down.
They told the same lies they'd been caught telling, but with even greater aggression this time. Shut up. It's midnight, they said, as the sun rose behind them. Who acts like that? Well, sociopaths do and in this case, the sociopaths turned out to be both Democrats and Republicans. The commitment to lying in Washington is far deeper and more bipartisan even than we realize, and we follow this stuff for a living.
Now, you sometimes hear people say that the whole partisan system is an illusion and that underneath the manufactured debates, the leaders on both sides are, in fact, secretly united in a common love of money and power and the deception required to get them. And honestly, we can never really bring ourselves to believe that. It's just too dark. But now we do believe it because we have seen it.
Consider the death of police officer Brian Sicknick. Now, we still don't know exactly how Officer Sicknick died. We're not certain that anyone does know. No one has explained it, but after reviewing the previously withheld video evidence, we can tell you with certainty that Officer Sicknick was not beaten to death by Trump voters at the Capitol.
The tape shows very clearly Brian Sicknick walking through the building in apparent health after the media told us for two years that he had been murdered. So, they were wrong about that. Ok. They got caught. Here's the interesting thing. They won't admit it. Liz Cheney's tweet is still on Twitter tonight. "Officer Sicknick was killed defending our Capitol from the violent mob on January 6." No correction. Anderson Cooper of CNN still has not apologized "Officer Brian Sicknick died after being hit the head with a fire extinguisher during the fight," he told us. Those are lies. Why not just admit it and move on? They won't.
In fact, this week, the White House trotted out both the press secretary and Joe Biden's attorney general, the attorney general of the United States, to claim not just that Brian Sicknick was actually murdered by Republicans at the Capitol, but that other officers were murdered, too. It's almost beyond belief. Watch this.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: The wide range of bipartisan lawmakers, you heard them all yesterday, you guys reported on it, who have condemned this false depiction of the unprecedented violent attack on upon our Constitution and the rule of law, which cost police officers their lives.
MERRICK GARLAND: It was a violent attack on a fundamental tenet of American democracy, that power is peacefully transferred from one administration to another. Over 100 officers were assaulted on that day. Five officers died.
"Five officers died on that day." Now, that's just not some guy on Twitter. That's the attorney general of the United States. That's a man whose honesty is central to his job. If you had a choice between IQ and integrity in an attorney general, of course you go with integrity because it's essential, but Joe Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, is a liar. He just lied about something that is provably false. Who are these five officers who were "killed that day"?
Notice he didn't tell you. No one ever tells you. No one ever shows you their autopsies. They don't want any detail. They just want the slogan. Now they're counting Brian Sicknick. That's a lie. But who are the other four? Well, those are four officers who killed themselves after January 6, in some cases long after January 6. But their suicides, we know for a fact, were the result of the Republican mob at the Capitol. It's just false, and it's not some esoteric fact.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS PLANNING TO VISIT JAN. 6 DEFENDANTS IN DC JAIL
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. ((Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images))
That fact is available to anyone who has internet access. No police officers died that day on January 6, none, not one. Some were assaulted. That is true and their assaults are indefensible. How many were assaulted? Garland said over 100. The Government Accountability Office says the number is 114, and we're just going to roll with that. We don't know if it's true, but we'll take it at face value and that is bad. We are opposed to assaulting police officers in any context. We said that on January 6, 2021. We'll say it again. We're against that.
But is January 6 the worst assault on the U.S. government since the Civil War? That's insane. It's not even close. How about March of 1954, when Puerto Rican separatists shot five congressmen in the Capitol building – five members of Congress shot in the building. It's all bad, but the worst since the Civil War? You’re just a flat-out liar if you're saying that.
More recently, this is an event we all remember, Antifa descended on Washington, D.C to force the sitting president from office. But it was Trump, so that's cool, and why they were there. They set a historic Christian church on fire, St. John’s in Lafayette Square. Do you remember that? You should, because it happened Labor Day weekend less than three years ago and when that happened, the left-wing mayor of Washington, D.C. refused to allow her police department, the MPD, to assist Secret Service agents while they were under siege and getting beaten. No, she made her cops stand back and watch it happen, and they were very upset about it at the time. You may have forgotten that. Here's what it looks like.
REPORTER: I believe there are several fires raging now down this street and this is what you hate to see. There are people throwing fireworks and who knows what else. They just set fire to St. John's Church.
Burning a church across from the White House. Those are the George Floyd riots. What was the toll there? Now, we're not going to guess. We're going to go again right to the government, according to a recently released jail report last month. During those attacks, the 2020 attack on the White House by left wing mobs, "Federal Protective Services, the Secret Service and the Park Police reported that at least 180 officers were injured during the demonstrations, including concussions, lacerations, exposure to chemical gas and severe burning."
So, while stipulating that all riots are bad because precision matters, facts matter, the truth matters, here's the truth: More cops were injured by Kamala Harris's favorite mob, BLM, at the White House than were injured by Trump voters at the Capitol on January 6, a lot more. So, again, to be clear, both events are bad, but here's the key. We only remember one of them. Why? Because the people in charge of history are liars - liars, And lying is bad and on a national scale, it's deadly. It's corrosive of everything that is good in the country, including trust and your grasp on reality itself and that's what they try to make.
MILITARY VET CONVICTED OF STORMING THE US CAPITOL
You lie. Men can become women. Climate change is an existential threat, or whatever the lie is they're making you tell, they don't believe it. They know you don't believe it, but by forcing you to repeatedly degrade and control you, they make you less of a person. They also hurt individuals. We told you Monday about Navy veteran Jacob Chansley. He was tried by the media, convicted of being a domestic terrorist and sentenced to four years in prison. What exactly was Jacob Chansley's crime? Well, no one's ever very precise about that. Here's what the media told you.
ABC: It was in his horned helmet, fur pelts and face paint, Jacob Chansley became known as the QAnon shaman, but prosecutors called him the most prominent symbol of a violent insurrection.
CNN: He's been in jail since January and he's trying to get out, but prosecutors say he is still too dangerous to release.
MSNBC: Make no mistake, Chansley is a stone-cold thug.
CBS: Oh, he kept saying, you know, "I'm not violent, I'm peaceful, I'm a shaman," but then you put those images, what you were just talking about, you put those images together, and that isn't an image of, you know, of peace. This is the new face of extremism.
"It's the new face of extremism. Jacob Chansley is the new face of extreme extremism. He's a stone-cold thug. Prosecutors say he is too dangerous to release." And most people believe that because why wouldn't they? They were told it and there was no evidence to the contrary and now there is evidence to the contrary. We brought it here, Monday. The video that we reviewed at great length over three weeks showed with precision what Jacob Chansley actually did inside the Capitol and here's what it looks like once again.
TUCKER CARLSON: Here's video of Chansley in the Senate chamber. Capitol police officers take him to multiple entrances and even try to open locked doors for him. We counted at least nine officers who were within touching distance of unarmed Jacob Chansley. Not one of them even tried to slow him down. Chansley understood that Capitol Police were his allies. Video shows him giving thanks for them in a prayer on the floor of the Senate. Watch.
WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 19: Members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol hold its last public meeting in the Canon House Office Building on Capitol Hill on December 19, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
JACOB CHANSLEY, "QANON SHAMAN": Thank you, Heavenly Father for taking the inspiration needed to these police officers to let us into the building.
Contrast the reality of what Jacob Chansley did in the Capitol building on January 6, the indisputable facts recorded on video, some of which has never before been seen, with the depiction of Jacob Chansley that you've seen in the media for more than two years. He's a terrorist, they said, he should be killed.
STEVE SCHMIDT: Shoot him. Shoot him. Like is it you burst into the United States, if he was dressed like bin Laden, would they have shot him?
CARLSON: "Shoot him, Shoot him." It makes you wonder who are the violent extremists here? So, as you saw and again, details matter because this is a man, this is an American citizen, a Navy veteran. This is a human being and so what he actually did should be of deep concern to every American because he's in jail tonight. What Jacob Chansley actually did was wander peacefully through the Capitol, shepherded by Capitol police officers who literally opened doors for him. When one was locked, they went to another.
Dozens of officers stood and watched him. All of them had guns. Jacob Chansley did not. They never told Jacob Chansley to get out. The head of the Capitol Police today said we he was just trying to calm the situation. It was already calm. He was the only protester in the frame. They could have let him outside. They didn't. They helped him. We're not going to speculate as to why. We don't know why. All we know is what we see on the tape and no one disputes it. We didn't cherry-pick it. We didn't make it up.
Once inside the Senate chamber, as we told you, Chansley said a prayer, thanking God for the kindness of Capitol Hill police and good for him. They were kind. This was not a domestic terrorist and that matters, but what matters even more is the videos that we showed you after 26 months were not shown to Jacob Chansley's attorneys. That's a violation of the Constitution. and he's in jail because of it, because the liars on the January 6 Committee and the prosecutors who did their bidding and that means Bennie Thompson and that means Adam Schiff. It means Liz Cheney. These people have this man's life on their hands.
They helped withhold these videos from Jacob Chansley's attorneys and that means the judge who sentenced Jacob Chansley, Royce Lamberth, never saw them either and therefore...Judge Lamberth was able to say that what Chansley did was "horrific." He apparently had no idea that Chansley was wandering around with the cops, walking through doors they opened and saying prayers for them. We're quoting: "you made yourself the center of the riot," said the judge. Really? He accused Chansley of "obstructing the functioning of government."
That's not at all what was happening. He was ambling through the Capitol, flanked at all times, by armed cops were directing his movement. Meanwhile, prosecutors of the DOJ, the real villains here, falsely, they lied in court and said that Chansley was "leading the charge into the Capitol on January 6." They said he was, "the flag bearer for the mob," apparently because he had a flag. He was alone and of course, the media picked up on this and amplified it as the DOJ intended.
Fortune Magazine disgraced itself by comparing the man you just saw to ISIS. They said Chansley had "the zeal to possibly kidnap or kill officials." These aren't just lies. These are lies that destroyed a man. So, no matter who you voted for in the last election, you could probably agree that sending someone to prison for four years on the basis of fabricated evidence is the most serious threat to civil liberties we could possibly face.
And yet, here's the thing: Leaders in both parties, the party that Chansley voted against and the party he voted for, have said nothing, not one word about the implications of this videotape, the implications not just for Chansley, but for our Constitution and our country going forward.
Instead, oh, how dare you show this? What is clearly exculpatory evidence! Again, it's not just Chuck Schumer, it's Republican senators Kevin Cramer, Mike Rounds, Chuck Grassley, John Thune, Lindsey Graham, of course, Congressman Dan Crenshaw, needless to say, Kelly Armstrong, all went after us. We're not whining about that. We don't care, actually, but it just tells you everything about the way things actually work. They're not loyal to their voters. They are loyal to each other, and they're willing to lie, really lie and crush people. Mitch McConnell, Thom Tillis and BLM superfan Mitt Romney, all weak men – and like all weak men, vicious men – were especially angry. Watch.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, leaves a news conference following the weekly Republican caucus luncheon at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. Photographer: Samuel Corum/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Bloomberg)
MITCH MCCONNELL: It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that's completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here in the capital thinks.
THOM TILLIS: I think it's bull----. When you see police barricades breached, when you see police officers assaulted, all of that, or you had to be in close proximity to it, if you were just a tourist, you should have probably lined up at the visitor center and came in on an orderly basis. I just don't think it's helpful.
MITT ROMNEY: It's really sad to see Tucker Carlson go off the rails that bad. The American people saw what happened on January 6. 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.
Weak men are vicious men, and these are weak men whose attitudes towards an individual whose life has been destroyed on the basis of false and withheld evidence is vicious. Oh, we cherrypicked? Really? What they're saying, ironically, what they're describing, ironically, is exactly what the January 6 Committee and the prosecutors in these cases did for two years. They selectively picked small segments of tape to convince Americans that January 6 was something that it wasn't.
It was awful. We would not defend that. We hate vandalism. We hate assault. Was it a violent insurrection? It was not. Was it a killing of five officers in the Capitol? It was not. Those are lies, and they buried tape that contradicted and revealed those lies.
So, all we did was play the tape that they had been hiding for 26 months and show that there were American citizens, Jacob Chansley specifically, and others who civil liberties were annihilated, and you can make your own rational judgments about what that means. Do you want to live in a country where that's possible? They don't care. Neither party in Washington cares.
In fact, the leader of the Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer, just joined the leader of the Senate Republicans, Mitch McConnell, in calling for this show to be pulled off the air. Now, that's not an argument based on logic. It's based on hysteria and the shame you feel as a weak and terrified person when your lies are exposed. Here's Chuck Schumer claiming for the first time that, like Sandy Cortez, he himself nearly died on January 6.
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., waits to speak during an event to mark one year since the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool) (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool)
CHUCK SCHUMER: Tucker Carlson ran a lengthy segment last night arguing the January 6 Capitol attack was not, not, a violent insurrection, an attempt to rewrite history and erode the very foundation of our precious and sometimes fragile democracy. So, yes, this morning I am furious. Millions of Americans are furious. I was here on January 6. Many of you saw the footage as I ran for my life coming within a few feet of these criminals.
We invited Schumer on, McConnell, anybody is always welcome to come on our show. If we got something wrong, tell us how. If you think we altered the tape in some way, tell us how.
But they won't, nor will they answer the most basic question, which is: why should a non, demonstrably nonviolent man, who literally said a prayer of Thanksgiving for police officers on the Senate floor, how was that man ISIS? How was he a domestic terrorist? How is he a threat to the republic? Why is he in jail for four years? Shut up. Pull that show off the air.
They won't answer any questions, but we have a question, which is: How, in a free country guided by the Constitution, were these people allowed to withhold evidence from Jacob Chansley's lawyer? How could that happen?
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