Sure, Tucker. They Were “Sightseers.”

Tucker Carlson’s obsession with revising history on January 6 could backfire badly.

Image Courtesy of Fox News

Well, it happened as expected. On Monday, Tucker Carlson of Fox News aired the first of what are likely multiple, highly biased segments using selectively chosen clips to advance a counter-narrative to January 6. Carlson and Fox News received the footage directly from Speaker Kevin McCarthy who, over the protests of Democrats and other news media, had promised them exclusive access, and Carlson set about immediately to craft and spin his anti-factual take.

In Carlson’s version of the attack on the Capitol, Trump’s supporters are on tape walking calmly around the building, not rioting at the gates or through the halls. He used this footage to suggest that the media had lied about the insurrectionists, arguing that while there were some bad elements, most of the rioters were peaceful. He even called them “sightseers”—evoking the widely-ridiculed characterization by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) that the mob was acting more like they were on a “normal tourist visit.” 

So let’s look, painful as it may be to do so, at the primary claims Carlson has advanced and fact-check to dispel them. Then let’s get to the real questions here: Why is he doing this now, and is this a huge unforced error? At the very least, you’ll have something concise to say when your Fox News-watching uncle casts doubts upon the insurrection over family dinner.

What are Carlson’s primary claims so far?

Among all the people at the Capitol on January 6, Carlson focuses on two of the most unlikely, given the optics. You’ll see in a bit why it’s a gambit that might not pay off the way he had hoped.

The QAnon Shaman. Tucker’s first subject was Jacob Chansley, who is currently serving a federal sentence and, given his high recognizability and his very fringe views and actions, seems an odd choice to uplift. Carlson aired a portion of footage that, he claims, “shows police escorting people through the building, including the now-infamous ‘QAnon Shaman.’” Carlson’s guest, Miranda Devine of the New York Post, that bastion of truth and logic, then asks, “Why on earth was that footage not used as exculpatory evidence at his trial?”

Three quick points here:

1) There was no trial. Chansley pleaded guilty and was sentenced. That’s why it wasn’t used.

2) This was not some magically unearthed footage. All of it was available to defense lawyers, including Chansley’s, through a database of footage painfully assembled and made accessible to the defendants. If they wanted to use any of it, they could have.

3) Chansley and his lawyer elected not to do that because there was plenty of other footage of Chansley, as Carlson well knows, that would not have been favorable to him.

There were plenty of reasons on that day that police would rather escort than provoke anyone already inside the building, given that they had already been unable to halt, let alone arrest, the rioters effectively. In court documents, prosecutors noted that Capitol Police officers repeatedly tried to engage with Chansley and others in the crowd, asking them to leave. At several trials that actually did go forward, police testified that they felt outnumbered and were afraid of escalating violence by engaging with the mob. They were also trying to buy time for Congressmembers to evacuate and tried not draw the mob leaders any closer to them. We saw this with the heroic and quick actions of Officer Eugene Goodman. 

The footage Carlson didn’t show, it must be noted, included footage of some 140 assaults upon officers, including 106 with deadly weapons. 

Officer Brian Sicknick. Curiously, Carlson used his time to also question the death of Officer Sicknick. Carlson claimed Democrats turned Sicknick into a “prop” and a “martyr” by overstating the idea that the insurrection led to his death by stroke the day after. To buttress his narrative, which the Sicknick family in a statement has condemned as “unscrupulous and outright sleazy,” Carlson showed a clip of Sicknick in the crypt of the Capitol, where he appears to shout at nearby rioters while repeatedly waving his arms. From that, Carlson claimed Sicknick looks “healthy and vigorous” and alleged that therefore “it’s hard to imagine” that he was severely injured by the rioters and later died as a result of attacks.

Logical leaps aside, the real facts are as follows: Sicknick was sprayed in the face with a chemical agent and physically fought with rioters. One officer said he saw Sicknick in significant distress after the spray attack. The DC medical examiner ruled that Sicknick died of natural causes but also said, “all that transpired played a role in his condition.” As a result of the examiner’s report, however, no homicide charges were brought against the rioter who attacked him.

As discussed below, the decision by Carlson to focus on a police officer who died and question whether the riot contributed to that death is a curious one.

Why is Carlson doing this now?

It’s hard to find a rational reason why Fox News, which is facing a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit with the strong possibility of punitive damages, would double down via Carlson at this time, especially on January 6 and election denialism. Indeed, Carlson began his segment on Monday night by directly calling into question the results of the 2020 election once more, right before he downplayed the violence at the Capitol.

It should be noted, as I’ve written about earlier, that Fox News hosts’ private texts and communications show they did not believe the stolen election conspiracy theories others they had on their shows were peddling. Further, on January 6 many of the Fox News hosts were begging former chief of staff Mark Meadows to get Trump to send the rioters home, indicating that they knew it was not some peaceful protest.

The simplest answer to “why is he doing this now” is that Carlson knows this is red meat for Fox News viewers, who are desperate for a version of January 6 that lets them dismiss what their own eyes otherwise may have seen. Carlson had already produced a three-part “documentary” about January 6 called “Patriot Purge” that advanced a bogus claim that the entire insurrection was a “false flag” operation, an excuse to “strip millions of Americans—disfavored Americans—of their core constitutional rights.” He knows that false conspiracies drive ratings, and he will exploit that as far as he can.

Another strong possibility is that Fox News, and the Murdochs in particular, may have recently come to understand that they cannot shake the Trump beast loose, much as they would prefer to have a slicker strongman like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lead the party. Fox News has so conditioned its viewers to toe the MAGA party line that it must continue to feed this false narrative to hold their loyalty and attention and keep ratings up, as the Dominion lawsuit revelations make clear.

Carlson’s and McCarthy’s decision to focus on January 6 again is a mistake

Carlson’s decision to question the guilt of an extremist symbol of the far-right like the QAnon shaman, not to mention cast doubt upon the death of a police hero like Brian Sicknick, may play to his loyal viewers. But it’s likely to backfire with moderate voters who instinctively feel revulsion at the fringe theatrics of Chansley and deep sympathy for the Sicknick family and his fellow officers, who were right with Sicknick on the front lines that day.

More broadly, while Trump and his band of acolytes in the Freedom Caucus would be no doubt overjoyed to see a distorted relitigation of January 6, particularly given their own legal jeopardy, the voters have already made clear in the 2022 midterms that extremist, election-denying candidates are not who they want in charge. Nevertheless, the GOP once again finds itself looking back at 2020 instead of solving the problems in front of them that they promised to tackle, such as inflation, crime and immigration. 

McCarthy ought to know that it is politically suicidal to muck around in the mud of January 6 if you don’t have to. After all, the January 6 Committee hearings are done, and these few months are a rare time between those hearings and possible indictments from Special Counsel Jack Smith when the American public might otherwise not have to hear about the attack on the Capitol. Instead, McCarthy enabled Carlson to force the question again, leaving voters to pick sides on whether January 6 was really just a normal tourist visit or was in fact a violent insurrection to overturn the election. Not a tough call for anyone outside of the right-wing news bubble.

But in McCarthy’s tortured world, he likely had no choice but to accede to the demand of the extremists in his party once again. He did so knowing that they could sink the whole GOP ship by missing the iceberg directly in front of it, all because they are still staring backwards at January 6 (and COVID, and “censorship” of their social media, and whatever else their “Weaponization” committee elects in its great wisdom to weaponize). 

In short, Tucker Carlson’s January 6 “scoop” is probably great for Fox News and ratings, but it’s not good for our democracy and even worse for the Republican Party. It’s our responsibility to call out Carlson’s blatant falsehoods and keep the truth about January 6 front and center so that the majority of sane Americans can keep it straight in their heads—even while the Republicans commit more unforced errors by once again bringing up the worst day for Trump and the GOP in a generation.