OPINION:
Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently aired on his show portions of the Jan. 6 video footage he received from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Mr. Carlson claims that the previously unseen video shows a broader picture than the narrow one crafted by the House Select Committee.
Mr. Carlson asserts that the video, which was reportedly cherry-picked and heavily edited, presents a more complete narrative than the one chosen by the committee and shaped by a former ABC News executive.
As reported on the conservative website Libertynation.com, “prominent … was footage of Officer Brian Sicknick, who died the day after the events on Capitol Hill of what coroners describe as natural causes, suffering two strokes. The tapes show Mr. Sicknick escorting people out of the building while wearing a helmet, apparently unharmed. Early media reports stated that the officer had died after being struck in the head by rioters, a narrative that was soon dismissed upon investigation.”
The Sicknick family has issued a statement denouncing Mr. Carlson and Fox News for promoting what it called “lies.” Don’t both sets of videos present a fuller picture of that day? No responsible person is suggesting the lawbreakers were justified in attacking the Capitol and attempting to reverse the election results. Still, Democrats and the left are usually in favor of full disclosure. So am I.
Mr. Carlson claims that his edited video “overturns the single most powerful and politically useful lie that Democrats told us about January 6th.” That’s an overstatement, but the footage does add perspective.
On her MSNBC show, Rachel Maddow seemed more concerned about how Mr. Carlson acquired the tapes than what they show. She criticized Mr. McCarthy’s decision to give the tapes to Fox: “So the speaker of the House just gave them all of the security camera footage from the actual Capitol for them to play with, to see what they can do. … ’Here you go, Fox News Primetime. Hopefully, you can use this official government material to concoct an alternate narrative to give us some more convenient revisionist history about what happened on January 6th.’”
Again, Mr. Carlson’s video does not serve as justification for those who rioted and broke other laws. But some who breached the Capitol and didn’t cause damage have also been prosecuted and jailed. The worst these people should have been charged with — if they were to be charged at all — would be trespassing and entering parts of a government building, such as the speaker’s office, which is off-limits to the public.
Like videos we have seen of police using force to subdue suspects only to subsequently learn from the full video that some violently resisted arrest and tried to steal an officer’s gun, Mr. Carlson claims that the video he aired on his show offers a more complete picture than what the unanimously anti-Trump Select Committee showed the public.
President Donald Trump has accumulated his own heavy baggage. Still, the Fox video is the alternative view of some on the right that the story of that day was only partially told, and the narrative created by the committee was designed to produce a predetermined political outcome.
Dictionary.com offers one of several definitions of the word narrative: “A story that connects and explains a carefully selected set of supposedly true events, experiences, or the like, intended to support a particular viewpoint or thesis.”
That is precisely what Fox and Mr. Carlson think the House Select Committee did by projecting an incomplete narrative to support its view that Mr. Trump was responsible for those who rioted on that terrible day.
• Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book, “America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers and the Future of the United States” (HarperCollins/Zondervan).
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