Coming soon to a RW propaganda outlet near you
So, “House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 riot,” Axios reported Monday.
Yes, the same Carlson who Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit filings last week showed described then-President Donald Trump as ”a demonic force, a destroyer” off the air. Carlson demanded a Fox fact-checker be fired because she was bad for Fox’s stock price. God bless America.
You won’t have to guess what the co-producer of the “completely off the rails,” three-part series, “Patriot Purge,” will do with all that security footage. Carlson’s documentary reinterpreted the history of Jan. 6 into a false-flag operation by deep-state opponents of Donald J. Trump.
As The Atlantic‘s Anne Applebaum panned it, “Good people, honest people, true Americans, patriots, people just like you, are being cheated. Sinister forces inside the American government arranged all of this bad imagery in order to oppress you, to remove you, to eliminate you.”
Now Carlson will have Jan. 6 footage from every camera in the Capitol complex to edit and present to reinforce the narrative of “Patriot Purge.” Courtesy of Speaker of the House and empty suit, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R) of California.
Some of the footage is sensitive because along with camera locations it reveals exit routes officials used to escape to safety from Jan. 6 rioters. It could provide “a roadmap for 2024 insurrection,” tweeted Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat.
“It’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly,” House Homeland Security Committee ranking Democrat Bennie Thompson (Miss.) said in a Monday statement.
Tim Mulvey, a former January 6 committee spokesman, told CNN:
“When the January 6th Select Committee obtained access to US Capitol Police video footage, it was treated with great sensitivity given concerns about the security of lawmakers, staff, and the Capitol complex,” Mulvey said. “Access was limited to members and a small handful of investigators and senior staff, and the public use of any footage was coordinated in advance with Capitol Police.”
If McCarthy as indeed granted that access to Carlson, said Thompson, he “owes the American people an explanation of why he has done so and what steps he has taken to address the significant security concerns at stake.”
“Once the capabilities of a U.S. Capitol interior surveillance camera, including its position and whether it pans, tilts or zooms, is disclosed to the public via the release of a single video from that camera, the cat is out of the bag,” Justice Department prosecutors wrote in a July 2021 court filing.
Carlson has shown us who he is. Repeatedly. We know to what lengths he will go to promote antidemocratic authoritarians such as Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, and Donald Trump.
Now Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, the weakest speaker in the republic’s history, has shown himself equally debased. McCarthy is willing to risk the security of the Capitol complex to placate the rabid MAGA base he cut deals with to secure his dream job two steps away from the presidency.
No national security concerns are as important to faux-patriot Carlson as maintaining Fox’s stock price. What are the chances that former Project Veritas selective film editor, James O’Keefe, just tossed out on his ear, will find a new gig helping Carlson turn those hours of security footage into a masterwork of speculative MAGA fiction?
Defenders of democracy had better get ahead of their narrative the way President Joe Biden just got ahead of Putin’s spring Ukraine offensive. We know what’s coming.