It’s now a total alternative reality. The election was riddled with fraud denying Trump his legitimate landslide victory. And January 6th was a false flag operation by the deep state to enable the jackbooted thugs to silence patriotic Americans.
That’s where we are. And it is not a joke:
Tucker Carlson, the most popular voice in conservative media, drew condemnation Thursday for the trailer of a new series he plans to debut next week promising to “tell the true story” of the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which one subject appears to float a baseless conspiracy theory that the Capitol riotwas covertly orchestrated by the government.
“False flags have happened in this country,” an unidentified female speaker is heard to say in the clip of “Patriot Purge” aired on Carlson’s Fox News show Wednesday night, “one of which may have been January 6.”
Carlson said the three-part series will air as a “Tucker Carlson Original” on the streaming service Fox Nation starting Monday. “We believe that it answers a lot of the remaining questions from that day,” he said, arguing that the U.S. government has “launched a new war” on American citizens by prosecuting participants in the insurrection who ransacked the building and attacked law enforcement officers.
If Carlson endeavored to trigger a ferocious backlash with the trailer, he succeeded.
That outrage came from Republicans as well as from Democrats, and even included a member of the Fox News family. “’False flags!?’ Bull—-,” wrote Geraldo Rivera, a 20-year veteran of the network who serves as a roaming correspondent at large.
Two prominent Republican members of Congress called out the clip on Thursday morning. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) both serve on the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol.
“It appears that @FoxNews is giving @TuckerCarlson a platform to spread the same type of lies that provoked violence on January 6,” Cheney wrote on Twitter. “As @FoxNews knows, the election wasn’t stolen and January 6 was not a ‘false flag’ operation.” She tagged four company heavyweights in her post, including Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, Fox News C.E.O. Suzanne Scott, Fox News president Jay Wallace and former House speaker Paul D. Ryan, who serves on the board of network parent company Fox Corp.
“Anyone working for @FoxNews must speak out,” Kinzinger wrote. “This is disgusting. It appears @foxnews isn’t even pretending anymore.” He also thanked Rivera for his post.
Asked about the criticisms from Cheney, Kinzinger and Rivera, Fox News representatives did not respond. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that Carlson’s tweet containing the trailer did not violate the platform’s civic integrity policy.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who also serves on the Jan. 6 committee, condemned the series in a statement to The Post. “There is no lie too big or conspiracy theory too dangerous for Tucker Carlson to propagate,” he said. “His latest salvo is nothing less than an invitation to violence. By airing it, Fox News demonstrates yet again a willingness to profit from tearing the country down.”