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'Shameful' - Criticism of Tucker Carlson's take on the Capitol attack

It had been announced for a long time: Fox News and its prominent star presenter Tucker Carlson wanted to evaluate tens of thousands of hours of video material from the storming of the Capitol and make it accessible to the public.

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'Shameful' - Criticism of Tucker Carlson's take on the Capitol attack

It had been announced for a long time: Fox News and its prominent star presenter Tucker Carlson wanted to evaluate tens of thousands of hours of video material from the storming of the Capitol and make it accessible to the public. The fact that the US TV station even has the material goes back to a controversial decision by the new Republican House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy.

The right-wing talk show host showed a few selected images on Monday and Tuesday evening (local time) and commented on them in the spirit of ex-President Donald Trump, who repeatedly falsely claimed that only peaceful demonstrators were out and about at the time. Some of the video clips then also circulated on the Internet.

Among other things, it was possible to see how the demonstrator Jake Angeli (also known as Jakob Chansley), who became known as the "Qanon Shaman" - and has now been convicted - is led through the building and into new rooms by several different police officers. The situation seems peaceful, the police had already explained similar scenes in 2021 by driving a de-escalating strategy inside the Capitol - simply because of the mass of people in the Capitol.

Another much-discussed clip showed police officer Brian Sicknick, who died of a heart attack the day after the operation. Media reports at the time initially said that Sicknick had been attacked by the Capitol demonstrators with a fire extinguisher. It can now be seen that Sicknick is still unharmed and in good health, at least at the moment of the recording by the surveillance cameras.

"The recordings show neither an uprising nor a riot in progress," commented moderator Tucker Carlson, and he even pointed out that the presidential election in 2020 was "a serious betrayal of American democracy". The Democrats would only have wanted to distract from this with their committee of inquiry into the storming of the Capitol.

Carlson also embraced another conspiracy theory: Federal agents probably incited the violence, he claimed, without being able to prove it. An escalation that can definitely have an effect: Tucker Carlson's daily evening show on Fox News has an average of three million viewers, and the moderator and his followers have a large presence on social media.

Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger called Carlson's compilation of video footage misleading. "The show appropriately chose the quieter moments from our 41,000 hours of video footage," he said in an internal memo seen by US media. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called Carlson's show "one of the most shameful hours we've ever watched television."

But Republicans were also critical. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called it a "mistake" for Fox News to portray the storming of the US Capitol in this way. "In my opinion, the Chief of Capitol Police is accurately describing what most of us witnessed firsthand on January 6." Republican Senator Mitt Romney called Carlson's show "absurd" and "nonsense." Other Republicans in the House of Representatives, however, praised the show.

McCarthy had sabotaged his party's cooperation with the House inquiry into the Capitol attack and again defended the release of the video footage to Carlson on Tuesday. The committee had processed the attack and presented its final report shortly before Christmas, in which Trump was given significant responsibility for the storming of the Capitol.

The panel also recommended criminal prosecution of the former president on several counts. Whether the Justice Department will actually take criminal action against Trump remains to be seen, as the recommendation is not legally binding.

Trump supporters violently stormed the seat of parliament in Washington on January 6, 2021. Congress met there to formally confirm Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election.

Trump had incited his supporters in a speech with the often refuted claim that he had been deprived of a victory by massive election fraud. Five people died as a result of the riots.

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