Fox News host Tucker Carlson said that his show will air Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol footage this week and claimed it will show that federal and congressional officials “are lying” to Americans.
“The defenders of democracy are defending democracy again,” the Fox News host said last week. “They’re telling you it’s really, really dangerous. And anyone would get to see the thousands of hours of surveillance footage from January 6, which has been hidden from the public for two years as a tiny group of people gets to make up stories about what happened that day and change the country on the basis of those stories.”
“How does that work exactly?” he asked. “Well, it’s not democracy, of course. It’s building a bulwark against your lies being revealed. And they are lying. And we know that because we’ve been looking at the tape.”
In a March 3 follow-up post on Twitter, Carlson wrote that “the results of our investigation will air Monday and Tuesday night at 8 p.m. ET on the Fox News Channel,” referring to his timeslot. Carlson did not provide further details about what has been “hidden from the public.”
It was confirmed by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) last month that he provided the popular Fox host with more than 41,000 hours of Jan. 6 Capitol security footage, granting Carlson exclusive access. McCarthy said that after Carlson is finished, the footage would be released to the public at a later, undisclosed time.
The move to only gives Fox News the surveillance footage, drawing criticism from Democratic lawmakers as well as some conservative figures. A handful of corporate media media outlets sent letters to McCarthy and demanded access to the footage, claiming there are concerns Carlson will promote a biased narrative.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Sunday told CNN’s “State of the Union” that there is no indication that U.S. Capitol Police officials “have vetted that footage” sent to Carlson. “It is my hope and expectation that that will absolutely occur,” he said in an attempt to cast McCarthy’s decision as one that imperils Capitol security procedures.
