Capitol Police chief accuses Tucker Carlson of using ‘cherry-picked’ January 6 footage to push agenda

Fox News host Tucker Carlson is facing widespread condemnation after his latest attempt to alter the truth to better suit Donald Trump’s needs.

The primetime host was even criticized by Capitol Police, the organization whose officers suffered the most at the hands of Carlson’s ideological allies the day they stormed the U.S. Capitol and tried to stop the certification of the 2020 election.

It all started with an episode of Carlson’s show that aired Monday night, the first in a series of footage from the January 6 attack, provided exclusively to its producers by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, now ridiculed by the left and some of his own Republicans for the open effort to bone the far right and get Carlson to be the first to look at the footage.

In the episode, Carlson stressed that rioters—some of whom bludgeoned officers with flagpoles, stole riot shields, and chemically sprayed members of law enforcement—were actually “gentle” as they climbed through shattered windows and showed nothing but deference to the institution when they made racist rants. shouted insults at black officers trying to prevent them from hunting and executing plans to hang “Mike Pence” and other lawmakers — plans they openly chanted as the riot unfolded.

His words were roundly rejected, even by Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell, as well as by Thomas Manger, chief of the US Capitol Police.

According to Mr Manger, Carlson’s episode provides “no context” for clips, including clips showing rioters interacting with officers who tried to verbally convince them to leave, knowing law enforcement was outnumbered.

Here is the full text of Mr Manger’s memo to colleagues.

Last night, an op-ed broadcast commentary full of offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attack. The opinion program never contacted the department to provide proper context.

A false accusation is that our agents helped the rioters and acted as ‘tour guides’. This is outrageous and incorrect. The department assists the officers in the video shown last night. I don’t need to remind you how outnumbered our agents were on January 6. Those officers did their best to use de-escalation tactics to try and talk to rioters to get each other to leave the building.

The program is handily plucked from the quieter moments of our 41,000 hours of video. The commentary provides no context about the chaos and violence that occurred before or during these less tense moments.

Finally, last night’s most disturbing allegation was that the death of our late friend and colleague Brian Sicknick had nothing to do with his heroic actions on January 6. hours on the day he was violently assaulted, Officer Sicknick would not have died the next day.

Like some people choosing from 41,000 hours of video clips that seemingly support the story they want to tell, those of you who were here on January 6th, those of you who fought, those of you who made sure not a single member of Congress got hurt, those of you who contributed to the effort to keep the country’s legislative process going know firsthand what actually happened.

You fought hard on January 6 and risked your life to protect the Constitution and all that this country stands for. You, along with our law enforcement partners, saved every congressman and their staff.

TV commentary will not record the truth for our history books. The legal system will. The truth and justice are on our side.

Carlson continues to insist that the 2020 election was stolen, even though his network boss has admitted that this is a lie and that Carlson and others know it. It was recently revealed in text messages that he had privately mocked Trump campaign officials as liars, even as they spread the same conspiracies that he himself publicly espoused.