Misleading and offensive.
That is how the Capitol Police Chief
Tom Manger
described the presentation of footage
from the January
six 2021
attack on the Capitol on Fox last night.
Today, Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell,
a Republican from Kentucky,
sided with the police chief's assessment.
It was a mistake, in my view, for
Fox News to depict this
in a way that completely had variance
with what our chief
law enforcement official.
Here are a couple of things
on the other side of the Capitol.
However, it was House Speaker
Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California,
who gave Fox exclusive access
to 40,000 plus hours
of security footage from that day. Yes.
Fox, the very channel
whose executives
and hosts have recently been revealed
in a deposition
to have
knowingly presented lies
to their viewers
about the 2020 election lies
that inspired
the very same assault
on the Capitol on January six. 2021.
Now the Capitol police
chief says the channel
conveniently Cherry-picked video
shown showing
calmer moments
during the insurrection
showing for instance video
a rioter Jacob Chansley known as the Q
and on shaman
walking through the Capitol
not receiving pushback
from police in those moments.
This was presented
without the fuller context
as if this video of how
Chansley actually got into
the Capitol building did not exist.
It was not aired in court documents.
Of course,
prosecutors say that officers tried
repeatedly to get the shaman
to leave the Capitol,
and he, of course,
ultimately pleaded guilty
to felony charges
related to his activities on January six.
Now, Fox claimed
these small snippets of video
prove that Democrats and others
on the January
six committee have been lying
to the American people
about what happened on that day,
that very little about
the attack was violent.
Fox claims
here's how Republicans
who were actually in the Capitol
on that day described
what happened inside the Capitol
during the insurrection.
Again, these are Republicans
I mean, this is insane.
I mean, I've I,
I have not seen anything like this
since I deployed to Iraq in 2007 or 2008.
I mean, this is America
and this is what's happening.
Madam Speaker, today
the People's House was attacked,
which is an attack
on the republic itself.
There is no excuse for it.
A woman died
and people need to go to jail
to those
who wreaked havoc in our capital today.
You did not win.
Violence never wins.
So here are some of the things we know
to be true about January six.
Fact, Fox was given access
to more than 40000 hours
of Capitol
security footage by Speaker McCarthy,
CNN and other media organizations
such as ABC News or Gannett,
which owns
USA Today or CBS News
and the Los Angeles Times among them.
We have also requested
access to the same footage.
As of now,
we have not gotten that access
McCarthy's office
say there's still working on it.
Another fact
this move comes at the same time
that Fox is being sued by Dominion
Voting Systems for repeatedly lying
about its company
and airing lies about the 2020
election results
of those lies resulted in the January six
Capitol attacks as part of that trial.
Rupert Murdoch, the chair of Fox,
admitted under oath
that some Fox guests and some Fox hosts
lied about the 2020 election on the air.
And we know from the evidence presented
by Dominion that hosts
texted each other about various liars
whose deranged nonsense
they covered and in some cases platforms.
Sidney Powell is a complete nut.
No one will work with her.
Ditto with Rudy
Giuliani wrote one of those hosts
But none of that stopped Fox
from feeling hours of airtime,
elevating these false
conspiracy theories about the election.
Now, in his deposition,
Chairman Rupert Murdoch,
when asked if he seriously doubted
the claims
of massive election
fraud by Trump and his allies,
Murdoch responded, Oh, yes.
And he later said under oath,
I would have liked us to be stronger
in denouncing it in hindsight.
That's the channel, the network
that McCarthy handed over
all this footage to
or gave access to all this footage.
Here's another fact
Fox used the footage given to them
exclusively by Speaker McCarthy
to frame a description
of the events of January six,
where they say very little was organized
and very little was violent,
where the phrase, in their view,
deadly insurrection was a lie.
Deadly insurrection.
They say every part of that was a lie.
Keep in mind, for Trump,
supporters died that day.
One of them was shot by Capitol policeman
as she tried to climb through a window
to get into the House chamber
where police were trying
to evacuate lawmakers
including Republicans
from the unruly mob.
Now, Donald Trump immediately
said after this Fox
presentation that the special shows
all the January six defendants
should be freed, all the prisoners
let the January 6th prisoners go,
he said.
Now, all of this alternate theory
of what happened that day
contradicts law enforcement,
contradicts people who were there
that day.
Contacts Capitol Police officers,
contradicts bipartisan members
of the January six select committee
and contradicts
congressional Republicans.
But, you know, don't take my word for it.
They're trying to hunt down
the speaker of the House.
They built a gallows and chatted about
murdering
the vice president.
Terrorists, not patriots,
literally occupied
the floor of the House.
It was a riot.
It was a dangerous riot.
As a violent
law enforcement
agents were attacked
and seriously injured.
I was electrocuted again
and again and again.
They were bleeding.
They were throwing up.
They were you know, they had
I mean, I saw friends with blood
all over their faces.
I was slipping in people's blood.
This morning, I
reached out to Speaker McCarthy's office
and I asked four simple questions.
Does the speaker of the House
agree with Fox's
conclusion that everything
about the phrase deadly
insurrection is a lie?
Does the speaker of the House agree
that very little about
January six was organized or violent?
Does the speaker of the House agree
that members of the January
six Select House Committee lied
about what was on the security footage?
And does the Speaker of the House agree
that, quote,
the 2020 election was a grave
betrayal of democracy, unquote?
So far, Speaker
McCarthy has not responded
one does
wonder how much facts matter to him
this campaign to belittle
what happened on January six.
2021 was also done
in service of the continued argument
that 2020 election
was a grave
betrayal of American democracy.
So how are congressional Republicans
reacting today to Fox's airing of January
six footage last night as they did?
Well, let's take a listen
What do you think?
Yeah.
Tucker Carlson got this security first
from Speaker
McCarthy and sought to downplay
January six that it was,
you know,
mostly
peaceful chaos in his view
and said it was not insurrection
so that Brian Sicknick's
death was not laid the January 6th.
How do you feel about that?
I think it's bullshit.
I was here I was down there
and I saw maybe a few tourists,
the few people
who got caught up in things.
But when you see
police barricades
breached, when you see
police officers assaulted,
all of that,
or you had to be in close
proximity to it.
I just don't think it's helpful.
CNN's Manu Raju joins us now
from Capitol Hill
and Manu, you've been talking
to both Republicans
all day,
getting their reaction
to Fox's
airing of security footage last night.
What are they telling you?
Yeah,
they are making it very clear
that they sharply disagree
with the whitewashing of events here.
They lived through what happened.
They saw what happened.
They've seen the investigation
and they know how deadly
the violence was, many of them.
They're all that is said,
leave the Senate in a hurry
to secure locations.
And we saw deadly violence occur
that day at the hands of Donald
Trump supporters.
And it wasn't just
moderate Republicans
who broke from Tucker Carlson's
portrayal of it.
It was leaders like Speaker
like the Senate Minority
Leader, Mitch McConnell.
But it was also rank and file members,
including some conservatives
like Kevin Cramer of North Dakota. And
then breaking through
glass windows and doors
to get into the United States
Capitol against
the orders of police is a crime.
When you come into the chambers,
when you start opening members desks,
when you stand up in their balcony
to to somehow
put that in the same category as,
you know, permitted peaceful protest is
is just a lie.
I mean, I think it was a
yeah, it was an attack on the Capitol.
There were yeah,
there were a lot of people in the Capitol
at the time.
Who I think
were scared for their lives.
I thought it was an insurrection
at that time.
I still think
it was an insurrection today.
And Mitt Romney told me
that he believed that giving
Tucker Carlson the security footage
and the way that Carlson portrayed it
was, quote, disgusting and danger Lewis.
And he also said it was a mistake
for McCarthy to give that footage.
Tucker Carlson.
No word yet from McCarthy himself.
We approached him in the Capitol
today, Jake,
and he said he would answer
questions later today about all of this,
and we'll see what he has to say.
But didn't he say that last week to Manu?
Didn't he say
he was going to take questions last week
and he never took questions?
He did on one day in the Capitol.
The next day he answered a question.
So we'll see when he does.
Okay. Well, let's see what he does.
Manu Raju on Capitol Hill, thank you.