The two-year-old January 6 narrative of an attempted overthrow of the government by violent, armed insurrectionists has been demolished by new video, long withheld from the public by congressional Democrats, of the events in the Capitol 26 months ago. On March 6, Fox News host Tucker Carlson began releasing significant portions of the 40,000 hours of footage delivered to him by new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Carlson assured his viewers that the aired footage was all vetted before broadcasting by Capitol Hill police to allay any security concerns.
Much of the footage, of the Capitol interior before and after the January 6 riot, showed only empty hallways. But very significant footage discovered by Carlson’s staff showed throngs of people entering the Capitol — mostly through open doors staffed by police — in orderly, non-violent fashion, often interacting cordially with the police. There was abundant footage of Jacob Chansley, AKA the “Q Anon Shaman,” being escorted in full horned headpiece and makeup through the Capitol by police, who seemed to be giving him a tour of the premises instead of detaining a supposedly dangerous insurrectionist.
Meanwhile, the mysterious Ray Epps, long suspected of being a government operative and who was caught on camera inciting crowds to storm the Capitol, turns up in Carlson’s footage among the mob at the foot of the Capitol steps — long after he had supposedly left the area to return to his hotel room, according to Epps’ account of events given to the January 6 Committee.
Finally, Carlson showed his viewers how footage of January 6 that had been pushed by the media — the more sensational segments showing a minority of hooligans breaking glass and fighting with policemen outside the Capitol — was doctored and dramatized by media professionals, who added sound effects to make the goings-on appear much louder and more violent than in reality.
The left-leaning mainstream media, meanwhile, went on the attack immediately, claiming that the footage Carlson aired was misleading and flew in the face of facts established by hundreds of arrests and court cases. “Fox News Pushes False January 6th Narrative,” keened CBS Mornings. “Tucker Carlson Cherry-Picks Footage to Push False Narrative.” CBS’ Scott McFarland went on to smugly point to the “tens of thousands of pages of court filings” and the “tonnage of footage already released by the Justice Department” that conveniently support the longstanding narrative of violence and insurrection.
To be clear: No one is claiming that there was no violence on January 6, nor that there might have been a handful of genuine insurrectionists in the midst of the thousands of attendees. But the facts that the MSM have consistently lied about or downplayed, which have at least as much bearing on the overall event as the actions of a few misguided malcontents, are these:
- President Trump clearly encouraged the protesters to peacefully protest in front of the Capitol; he never incited violence, even by implication.
- The protesters had secured a permit to protest outside the Capitol; the event was legally planned, and the authorities were certainly not uninformed.
- The much-maligned “face of January 6” Jacob Chansley committed no acts of violence, and was peacefully escorted through the Capitol by multiple police officers.
- The only violent death on January 6 was the police shooting of unarmed protester Ashli Babbitt.
- The mainstream media has closed ranks around the liberal power elites in Washington in discouraging the release of any January 6 footage beyond that selected for release by congressional Democrats portraying the event in the worst possible light — instead of urging the release of all materials to allow the public to make up their own minds.
- Democrats and their January 6 Committee have ceaselessly and shamelessly exploited the event to try to discredit and persecute Trump, his movement, and his supporters.
- In stark contrast to January 6, Democrats and the American Left have strongly supported and rationalized mob violence whenever it has suited their political ends, such as the Antifa and BLM riots that convulsed America in the summer of 2020, violence that resulted in far more mayhem, death, injury, and destruction of property than the events of January 6, including damage to government buildings and attacks on policemen. Yet these were memorably and infamously deemed “mostly peaceful protests” by a CNN flack standing in front of a burning building.
For these and many other reasons, Tucker Carlson’s newly released footage is a long-overdue corrective, and the collective jeers of his leftist detractors reek of hypocrisy.
