Cooper joined Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), in blasting Carlson for twisting details of the Capitol riot into a conspiracy-fueled vision that portrayed the deadly insurrection as a mostly peaceful protest that involved little violence. Carlson has aired clips of mostly-never-before-seen video from Capitol Police security cameras on Jan. 6, 2021, on his show this week after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) granted the Fox News host exclusive access to 41,000 hours of footage.
Among those critics was Stephen Colbert, who denounced Carlson for having cherry-picked footage to depict the rioters as tourists and “sightseers.”
“Sightseers? Sightseers, really?” Colbert said. The CBS late-night host then envisioned a conversation between rioters: “Grab a rock, honey, we’re going to the Louvre. I want to peacefully smear my crap on the Mona Lisa. See if she keeps smiling after that.”
The Freedom Caucus desperately needed someone, anyone, to create propaganda to make it seem like January 6th was NBD. Their solution? Tucker Carlson. #Colbert pic.twitter.com/C82gUAGhSB
— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) March 8, 2023
The criticism of Carlson’s false narrative of the Capitol riot comes at a time when a cache of internal communications were released Tuesday as part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. The election-technology company is arguing that Fox News gravely hurt its economic future by allowing allies of Donald Trump to claim falsely on Fox programs that it rigged the election in favor of Joe Biden.
Included in the large selection of exhibits released Tuesday were text messages from Carlson, who defended Trump on-air but was had told colleagues that he “truly can’t wait” to mostly ignore Trump.
“I hate him passionately,” Carlson texted a colleague, according to the exhibits. “What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
The Fox News host is also facing blowback from some Senate Republicans who have broken ranks with their House GOP colleagues and criticized Carlson’s depiction of the Capitol riot on his show this week.
“It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here in the Capitol thinks,” McConnell told reporters. Added Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.): “To somehow put [Jan. 6] in the same category as a permitted peaceful protest is just a lie.”
Carlson criticized McConnell and other Republicans on Tuesday night and found support from Sen. Josh Hawley, who Carlson claimed that the video of the Missouri senator running from the Capitol was a “lie.”
“I think it’s great,” Hawley told reporters. “I’m glad he’s doing what he’s doing.”
Cable news and late-night hosts, however, did not think Carlson was doing great.
“It is an attempt to rewrite history on what is one of the most consequential, certainly one of the biggest events in American democracy, biggest threats to American democracy,” CNN’s Cooper said in his segment with Fanone.
On CBS, Colbert criticized McCarthy for making promises to the far-right House Freedom Caucus so that he could become speaker, including giving Carlson exclusive access to the Capitol Police footage.
“They desperately needed someone, anyone, to create propaganda to make it seem like [Jan. 6, 2021] was no big deal so they can stay in office and maybe do a better coup next time,” Colbert said on CBS. “And McCarthy kept his promise.”
After Colbert joked that the rioters “neatly lined up to smash those windows,” the host ran a video of what the movie “Jaws” might have looked like if Carlson had covered the fictional movie. Instead of a terrifying great white shark that eats innocent swimmers, “The Late Show” joked that Carlson’s depiction would have made the shark out to be an adorable child singing “Baby Shark.”
Comedian Marlon Wayans joked about Carlson’s new narrative on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” saying “according to Fox News, we just got the footage wrong.” Like Colbert, Wayans, who was hosting Tuesday’s show, took issue with Carlson framing the rioters as “sightseers.”
“If you have to punch a cop on your way in, you’re not sightseeing, you fightseeing,” Wayans said.
Seth Meyers took a different approach on his NBC show. The host put the whole saga involving McCarthy giving Carlson the footage into terms that fans of “The Simpsons” could easily understand.
“You guys know we can see what you’re doing, right? Kevin McCarthy, who is Trump’s Waylon Smithers, gives all the footage to Tucker, Tucker shows only the tame parts, and then Trump claims the rioters were framed,” Meyers said. “It’s like watching a magic show where the magician is wearing sheer sleeves.”
At the end of a day in which both Democratic and Republican lawmakers questioned Carlson and Fox for airing the footage and depicting the riot as mostly peaceful, the hosts agreed that important context has been missing from the Fox host’s show this week.
“All Tucker Carson proved is that you can make anything better by not showing the bad part,” Wayans said.
Sarah Ellison, Paul Kane, Marianna Sotomayor, Liz Goodwin and Tom Jackman contributed to this report.
