Senator Chuck Schumer wasted no time in excoriating Tucker Carlson and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for releasing the surveillance tapes of the Capitol riot from January 6, 2021. That day, repeatedly referred to as a "deadly insurrection" by Democrats and their corporate media lapdogs, has been used as a cudgel to badger conservatives, Trump supporters, and the entire GOP.
Yet the tapes, now seen for the first time on Tucker Carlson Tonight, paint a very different picture, one Chuck Schumer and his cronies don't want you to see. And he said so, outright, on the Senate floor.
Tucker Carlson's exposé of never-before-seen surveillance footage from the day Democrats compare to Pearl Harbor and 9/11 show unequivocally that Nancy Pelosi's January 6 Committee was lying and sensationalizing the events of that day.
They said police officers were killed—they weren't. They said the mob was armed and violent—footage shows that they were carrying flagpoles and, for the most part, walking peacefully inside the building. They said the crowd stormed the Capitol—many of them were let in by Capitol Police.
Schumer and his allies in Congress didn't want any of this to be revealed.
Carlson's segment was "shameful," Schumer said. Schumer said Carlson had "contempt for the facts" and "disregard for the risks" in showing viewers that the Capitol riot "was not a violent insurrection."
Carlson, who will be showing more footage on Tuesday night, was given thousands of hours of footage from McCarthy, with the idea that his team would review it and unearth the truth that the January 6 Committee had been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to find.
"By diving deep into the waters of conspiracy, and cherry picking from 1000s of hours of security footage," Schumer said, "Mr. Carlson told the bold-faced lie that the Capitol attack which we all saw with their own eyes, was somehow not an attack at all."
Schumer said he was not only angry with Carlson and his producers but with McCarthy as well, who he said should not have released the footage at all, footage that was available to the January 6 Committee, and "cherry-picked," to use a word from Schumer's diatribe, to show only those moments the Committee wished the American public to see.
The Committee, which hired a producer from Good Morning America to produce their prime-time public hearings, augmented and edited footage themselves to give the impression that the riot was violent and deadly, while in actual fact the one person who was shot and killed that day was a Trump-supporting veteran, Ashli Babbit.
Schumer explained that he was at the Capitol on January 6, along with much of his staff. "At one point," he said, "I was within 30 feet of the rioters. One of them, I was told, shouted out 'let's get him' before my detail pulled me away, and we ran in the other direction." Schumer didn't hear the remark, but he heard about it, and that was enough for him to fear for his safety while surrounded by his security detail.
"To say January 6 was not violent is a lie, a lie pure and simple," he said, encouraging Fox News to not allow Carlson to continue to air the footage or engage in analysis thereof.
"Fox News should tell him not to. Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, tell Carlson not to run a second segment of lies. You know, it's a lie. You've admitted it's a lie and speaker McCarthy is every bit as culpable as Carlson," he said.
"Speaker McCarthy has played a treacherous, treacherous game by catering to the hard right," Schumer said. "He's enabled the 'big lie' and has further eroded away at our precious democracy when people don't believe elections around the level. That's the beginning of the end of this bold experiment in democracy that has gone on for more than 200 years," Schumer said, linking the revelations about the riot to the reason for the riot itself.
He demanded that Carlson be condemned for showing America the video that Congress has had access to and refused to reveal all along, claiming that the sharing of the footage is an attempt to undermine democracy. This from the man and the party that used bias and lies to impeach Donald Trump, based entirely on fabrications—including lies about the Capitol riot.
"We all Americans, of all types and stripes and corners of this country, Democrats, Republicans, independents, need to take a stand and call out Mr. Carlson's conduct for what it is: a dangerous, unforgivable attempt to destabilize our democracy and rewrite the history of the worst attack on our Constitution since the Civil War, it's an insult to every police officer who is on the scene. That terrible, fearful day. It's an insult to the memory of every single person who perished in connection to the attack, especially to the memory of Brian Sicknick," Schumer said.
Officer Sicknick died on January 7, 2021. Democrats have used his death to say that rioters killed him, but footage revealed by Carlson shows that even after he was in an altercation with rioters, he was walking around the Capitol.
"I hope every member of this chamber will call out Fox and Mr. Carlson for defending the insurrectionists and again," Schumer said, "I am disappointed and angered."
What really angers Schumer is that the narrative Democrats and corporate media crafted so carefully about the Capitol riot is crumbling under the heavy weight of Carlson's revealed facts.
"I condemn Mr. Carlson for siding with the enemies of democracy," he said in conclusion. "I strongly condemn speaker McCarthy's actions and fiercely oppose his decision to share this footage with Carlson. I urge Fox News to order Carlson to cease propagating the 'big lie' on his network and to level with their viewers about the truth. The truth behind the efforts to mislead the public conduct like theirs is just asking for another January 6. To have as a night, millions of Americans tuned in to one of the most shameful hours we have ever seen on cable television."
Schumer wants to continue to use January 6 as a cudgel to beat his political opposition. The only problem is that in the harsh light of truth, the lies he and his colleagues told about Trump, his supporters, and the events of January 6 wither and die.
