Fox News’ Tucker Carlson was granted exclusive access to never-before-seen footage of the events of January 6, 2020, shedding “new light” on what has become a watershed moment in American politics.
Carlson claimed that over 40,000 hours of footage from surveillance cameras in and around the United States Capitol have been withheld from the public.
“Once you see the video, you’ll understand why,” Carlson remarked.
The Fox News host delivered his monologue over excerpts from the footage showing protestors walking through the Capitol with police officers in tow, passing other officers stationed at doors who did not attempt to stop them or intervene.
In one shot, a protestor picks up what appears to be a toppled side table and neatly sets it upright. Carlson did not show video footage of how the table came to be overturned and broken into two pieces.
“Taken as a whole the video record does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection,” Carlson opined. “In fact, it demolishes that claim.”
He went on to argue that the Democrat Party “and its allies in the media” purposefully censored the totality of the video record to support the “insurrection” narrative.
“By controlling the images you were allowed to view from January 6, they controlled how the public understood that day,” he argued.
Carlson then claimed that the real purpose of the “concerted censorship efforts” was to greenlight a “federal crackdown” on political opponents.
According to reports, over 1,000 individuals have been arrested in connection with the events of January 6.
Carlson acknowledged that a “small percentage” of those who entered the Capitol building were “hooligans” and “vandals” but asserted that the newly released video records show that most of the people who entered were “peaceful, orderly, and meek.”
“These were not insurrectionists. These were sight-seers,” he claimed, as footage played of two men in a hallway inquisitively looking at papers on a desk meant for the public.
Carlson then focused on the activities of the man he called “the single most famous person arrested that day,” Jacob Chansley, the so-called “QAnon Shaman.”
Chansley, a Navy veteran who wore red, white, and blue face paint, a furred hat with horns, and carried an American flag, became a cultural meme and, according to Carlson, became “the face of January 6” for the insurrection narrative.
Chansley was ultimately sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison for his actions that day, but Carlson argued that the new footage reveals something far less insidious.
“Virtually every moment of [Chansley’s] time inside the Capitol was caught on tape,” Carlson said.
“The tape show[s] that Capitol police never stopped Jacob Chansley,” he continued. “They helped him. They acted as his tour guides.”
Carlson then showed footage of Chansley walking with two police officers, trying various doors to enter the U.S. Senate chamber. In one shot, an officer tries the door for Chansley.
At one point, a total of nine armed officers were “within touching distance of unarmed Jacob Chansley,” Carlson noted. “Not one of them tried to slow him down.”
Carlson then showed footage of Chansley giving thanks in prayer that the officers allowed him and others onto the Senate floor.
The former chair of the Democrat’s committee on January 6, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MI), said in a statement that it “is a dereliction of duty for Kevin McCarthy to give Tucker Carlson carte blanche access to sensitive U.S. Capitol security surveillance footage from one of the darkest days in the history of our democracy.”
Thompson continued, “Despite repeated warnings as to the sensitive nature of this footage, the Speaker decided it was more important to give in to a Fox host who spews lies and propaganda than to protect the Capitol and the police, members, and staff that serve in it.”