McCarthy Defends Releasing Jan. 6 Tapes to Carlson, Fires Right Back at CNN Reporter After He Whines
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy stood firm on his decision to make thousands of hours of video footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion available to Fox News host Tucker Carlson after a CNN reporter implied he had done something wrong.
In the mind of CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju, offering Americans a broader perspective of the events that day is a bad idea.
Carlson’s producers sifted through more than 40,000 hours of video from the incursion, which followed a rally that day by then-President Donald Trump and resulted in a delay in the certification of the 2020 election and at least 1,000 arrests.
The House select committee that investigated the incident portrayed it as the near-end of the republic in a series of dramatic and theatrical hearings last year. Committee members quite literally enlisted the services of a Hollywood producer to sell their story.
But the committee’s seven Democrats and two fiercely anti-Trump Republicans suppressed clips that Carlson showed his audience Monday. The videos told a different story from the one the left-wing establishment media and Democrats wanted to sell.
While there was indisputably violence at the Capitol two years ago, not every person who entered the building was there to rampage.
At least one prominent and now-convicted trespasser, “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley, apparently had police officers as tour guides, the new videos show.
NEW – Police “acted as tour guide” for “QAnon Shaman” on Jan. 6pic.twitter.com/mN5AIQgePd
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) March 7, 2023
The point is, the incursion of the building was never as cut and dry as “insurrectionists” versus the people they wanted dead.
The videos also shed new light on claims that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed by protesters trying to enter the building on Jan. 6. According to Carlson, the footage shows Sicknick walking around inside the Capitol afterward, apparently “healthy and vigorous.”
🚨MYTH BUSTED: J6 surveillance Footage shows Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick walking healthily through the Capitol AFTER Democrats claimed he had already been killed.
Sicknick died days later from unrelated causes. Democrats used this officers dead body as a political prop pic.twitter.com/3EvwNpDCX2
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 7, 2023
(Washington’s chief medical examiner announced in April 2021 that Sicknick died of natural causes related to two strokes on Jan. 7.)
The only person who died from violence during the incursion was Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed Air Force veteran who was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer.
Carlson, thanks to McCarthy, offered a different side of the Jan. 6 story to millions of Americans, one that had been hidden from them.
The corporate media, Democrats and even some Republicans immediately started melting down. Their account of the events of Jan. 6 is never to be disputed.
That being what it is, there is a notion on the left that McCarthy must answer for the fact that people now have the opportunity to see evidence that was supposed to remain hidden.
Raju addressed the House speaker on Tuesday and tried to grill him about offering Carlson the full and unedited videos from Jan. 6.
“Because of the footage that you gave Tucker Carlson, last night he went on and said this was a mostly peaceful chaos, as he said. He downplayed Brian Sicknick’s death, said it was not related to Jan. 6, that this was not an insurrection,” the CNN correspondent said.
He then asked, “Do you regret giving him this footage so he could whitewash the events of that day?”
McCarthy had an excellent response to Raju’s loaded question.
“No,” the speaker said. “I said at the very beginning, ‘transparency.’ And so what I wanted to produce for everybody is exactly what I said, that people can actually look at it and see what’s gone on that day.”
BREAKING: McCarthy defends Tucker release of J6 tapes, slams CNN pic.twitter.com/e6FxWHWoDf
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) March 8, 2023
McCarthy concluded Americans can “come up with their own conclusion” about what happened on Jan. 6.
He also reminded the CNN reporter that his network shared the secure location of many lawmakers during the incursion, which has rendered the area useless.
The speaker held his ground.
Raju’s attempted interrogation was, of course, not intended to hold McCarthy accountable for some indiscretion, nor was it an honest effort to get to the truth for his network’s viewers.
The CNN reporter’s questions were designed to inflict damage on the top House Republican by putting him on the defensive. Raju had only one motive for his aggressive questions, and that was to dissuade people from asking questions about Jan. 6.
Democrats and the media have spent two years portraying the Capitol incursion an event on the same level as the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. It is tantamount to Pearl Harbor to some of these people.
Carlson has made evidence available to Americans that shows a different side of what happened that day. That ultimately threatens the ability of Democrats to use it as political capital.
The left-wing media want McCarthy to pay for that.
The speaker deserves credit for both offering the American people much-needed transparency and not backing down when challenged by the biased media for it.
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