US presenter Tucker Carlson, who moderates a program with an audience of millions on the news channel “Fox News”, has described the people who violently stormed the Capitol building in Washington on January 6, 2021 as “tourists” or “visitors” (sightseers) to support his oft-repeated conspiracy theory that the storming of the Capitol was hyped by the mainstream press to vilify former President Donald Trump.
Carlson’s recent comments are making headlines in the US, not least because he made them while broadcasting video footage previously provided to him by Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.
Carlson also implied on his show, during the airing of the video footage, that the death of Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died of a stroke a day after a confrontation with intruders during the storming of the Capitol, had been exaggerated and exploited. “They knew he wasn’t murdered by the mob, but they still claimed it was,” Carlson said.
Carlson “picked raisins”
According to Bloomberg news agency, Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said Carlson “cherished the more harmless moments” of January 6th. He emphasized that Sicknick would not have died the next day “if he had not fought bravely for hours on the day he was violently attacked”.
Carlson has also been criticized by the Republican Party itself. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told reporters that he believed the Capitol Police Chief “accurately described what most of us witnessed firsthand on Jan. 6.”
When asked if McCarthy made a mistake in providing the video to Carlson, McConnell declined to answer. “In my view, it was a mistake that Fox News presented this in a way that is totally at odds with what our chief police officer is thinking here in the Capitol,” he said.