Carlson, Mccarthy is risking
considerable considerable public
backlash.
Republican house speaker Kevin
Mccarthy tonight defending his
decision to give thousands of
hours of security footage of the
January 6th attack on the
capitol exclusively to tucker
Carlson.
Most of the video never seen by
the public.
Mccarthy telling "The New York
Times," quote, they do belong to
the American public.
I think sunshine lets everybody
make their own judgment.
But media watchers are concerned
about how Carlson might handle
the footage.
>> He's giving it to somebody
who has been perhaps the chief
propagator on fox and one of the
nation's leading propagators of
conspiracy theories and baseless
claims about what happened on
January 6th.
>> It's just like every hour --
>> Reporter: Carlson has
downplayed the seriousness of
the January 6th insurrection and
made false claims like this on
his fox show.
>> So FBI operatives were
organizing the attack on the
capitol on January 6th according
to government documents.
>> Reporter: Top Democrats are
furious over Mccarthy's granting
of the footage to Carlson.
Senate majority leader chuck
Schumer telling colleagues in a
letter that it, quote, poses
grave security risks to members
of congress and everyone who
works on capitol hill but in
defending the move Mccarthy also
told "The times" he had, quote,
promised to release the footage.
Mccarthy did indeed promise to
release the video as part of his
contentious bid to become house
speaker.
A GOP source tells CNN,
conservative Republican
congressman and trump supporter
Matt Gaetz had specifically
demanded the footage be released
as a condition of supporting
Mccarthy's speakership bid but
that Gaetz did not demand that
the footage be given to tucker
Carlson.
That was decided later.
>> It's a sign of the speaker's
precarious political situation,
that he feels that he needs to
do this, that he's trying to win
over some of the hard right
elements of his party while also
holding power and holding on to
the speakership.
>> Reporter: We reached out to
tucker Carlson and Fox News and
asked how they plan to handle
the January 6th footage.
We haven't heard back.
According to the "The New York
Times," after tucker Carlson
does whatever he does with the
footage Kevin Mccarthy has said
he might make the footage more
widely available possibly to
other media outlets, wolf.
>> All right, we shall see,
thanks very much, Brian Todd
reporting for us.
We're joined by two former
members of congress who are now
CNN political commentators.
Adam Kinzinger and mondaire
Jones.
Adam, as someone who worked on
the select committee
investigating January 6th, the
insurrection, what do you make
of speaker Mccarthy outsourcing
this video now, very sensitive
video, thousands of hours to fox
News?
>> Well, look, it's one thing
Fox News which would have been
wrong, it's another thing tucker
Carlson, tucker has been the
chief of the conspiracy
theories, yes, it poses a
danger.
Secondarily this can feed
conspiracy theories, so there is
an old conspiracy theory where
you see a rioter try to open a
door and it's a fire door.
They're actually difficult to
open and he looks up and gets
off camera direction from
somebody who had opened a fire
door and then he opens the door
because they told him how to do
it.
That turned into a conspiracy,
by the way, that actually he's
looking up at some control panel
or at some camera where there's
some officer at a control panel
but then buzzed him in,
completely garbage and untrue
but that's what you can do when
you selectively take pieces of
the video so I either expect
tucker Carlson to selectively
take pieces that can be -- you
can make up questions with it
because always just asking
questions or secondarily if you
don't hear anything from him, of
course, it proves that it is
exactly what everybody knows
January 6th was.
>> Mondaire, Mccarthy said these
tapes and I'm quoting him now
belong to the American public.
Is the American public going to
get an objective look at these
tapes from tucker Carlson?
>> Certainly not.
In fact, "The New York Times"
reported recently that according
to the dominion lawsuit that
voting machine lawsuit that
tucker Carlson was sending text
messages in which he raised
serious doubts about the
truthfulness of people like Rudy
Giuliani and others who were
raising baseless claims about
the election in 2020.
We also know that in is someone
who immediately after January
6th took place pivoted to
conspiracy theories like antifa
caused it and so many other,
again, patently false, you know,
theories about what caused it,
so this is not someone who has
an interest in telling the
truth.
This is someone who is an
extension of the Republican
party's propaganda machine when
it comes to January 6th and we
should expect nothing else
coming from this guy than that.
>> Adam, are there political
risks for this move, political
risks that this move potentially
gets for Mccarthy?
>> Yeah, I mean he's got his
internal political risks.
I don't think this will take him
down because, again, basically
everybody voted for Mccarthy and
one of the issues with the
moderates and so-called
moderates of the GOP of which I
was one is, you know, a lot of
imtoos you like to work as a
team.
They don't really want to stand
up and overthrow the speaker
like the freedom club often does
so there's -- it's like a
cumulative risk.
The more he does this, the more
you're going to start seeing
people within the so-called
moderates outraged about it.
Obviously the American people
have got to be looking at this
and short of just tucker
Carlson's audience have been
looking at this going, what in
the world was he thinking and
let me say it's going to be one
of two things.
Either he did make a promise to
tucker Carlson or if as the
reporting suggests it was just
to release it then Kevin
Mccarthy did this politically
calculated to both garner favor
with tucker Carlson and/or have
him on speed dial because behind
the scenes Kevin Mccarthy just
about every meeting you're in
with him talks about someone
famous he talked to so now if he
can have tucker Carlson's ear
that will impress a lot of
Republicans when he's meeting
with them.
>> Mondaire, what does it tell
you Mccarthy has already been
fund-raising off of this
decision to release these
videotapes to tucker Carlson?
>> Kevin Mccarthy has gone full
Maga to the extent anyone was
under any illusion that Kevin
Mccarthy would be able to be a
speaker of the house under this
Republican majority and have
some semblance of reasonableness
or integrity for that matter,
then I think they've been
disabused of that time and time
again, you know, it was just a
few weeks ago that Kevin
Mccarthy was doing interviews in
which he said that he had not
made certain concessions to Matt
Gaetz and others denying him the
speakership so here we learn
that this was one of several
things that he promised and he's
following through on that
promise, he's doing it, by the
way, to the detriment of the
safety of hundreds of members of
congress and thousands of staff
persons who work on the hill who
nearly died on January 6th in
2021 and who now are going to
see their lives put at risk
again when people who are bad