MOSHE HILL OPINION COLUMNS MARCH 15 2023
Three weeks ago, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy gave 41,000 hours of footage from the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, to Fox News host Tucker Carlson. In the intervening time between then and Carlson’s revelations from the reviewing of those tapes, the Left has twisted themselves into knots, frightened of what those times will reveal about their years of lies about what happened that day. Democrats’ incompetence and propensity to cover-up their falsehoods turn a simple move by McCarthy into a Grandmaster-level chess move.
To tell their side of the story, Nancy Pelosi created the “Select January 6th Committee” after a bicameral Commission was rejected by the Senate. She rejected several of McCarthy’s appointees, an unprecedented move that showed how biased and partisan this Committee intended to be, and she proceeded to hire the former president of ABC News to help craft the narrative and storytelling of the Prime Time Special, which aired on every network except Fox News.
The Select January 6th Committee was in session for nearly 18 months and cost a reported $10 million of taxpayer money to reveal nothing new, and to tell some blatant fabrications to the American people. At the January 6 hearings, we heard testimony that Donald Trump took control of “The Beast” from the Secret Service. We were shown a highly edited video that omits the fact that Trump said to “peacefully” march to the Capitol (like every single other demonstration in DC, marching is how protests in DC occur). The American people saw through the lies of the Committee, but Democrats and the media pushed it anyway.
When Republicans regained control of the House this year, there were demands from many to have a Committee to investigate the Committee. People wanted to see the videos that Democrats wouldn’t show, because there were many gaps in the story. Videos have been circulating the Internet for years, showing police officers opening barricades or non-rioters walking into the Capitol by the hundreds to simply take some pictures and then leave peacefully. Something happened on that day that the officials were not telling us – which seems to be a pattern in the past few years.
Instead of wasting more time and resources, only to be ignored by the media when the revelations were discovered – like with the Benghazi hearings – McCarthy made a simple move that drove the Left crazy: He gave all the available footage to Tucker Carlson for his team to investigate.
Carlson is, of course, a partisan. He makes no attempt to hide that, nor does he claim objectivity at any point. He is of the Right as everyone on the Select January 6th Committee is of the Left (yes, including Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney). The Speaker of the House at the time, Nancy Pelosi, received no backlash in giving non-classified materials to partisan players and allowing them to make selective and edited videos telling a specific narrative to the American people, yet we are supposed to be outraged when Kevin McCarthy does the same thing without wasting taxpayer dollars to do it?
Yet that is exactly what the White House and Democrats want. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Rupert Murdoch to not allow Carlson back on the air, saying that Carlson’s first segment was a “dangerous, unforgivable attempt to destabilize our democracy and rewrite the history of the worst attack on our Constitution since the Civil War.” The White House Press Secretary called Carlson’s reporting a “false depiction” and proceeded to use legacy media outlets like NPR and the Washington Post’s smear columns to attack Carlson – further highlighting the too-cozy relationship between the Democrats and the media.
So, what did Carlson show that was so egregious, so vile, that the Democrats are banging the table demanding it be shut down? There were a few revelations, which should not be so damaging to Democrats, yet are, because it highlights the lies and coverups that they perpetrated.
First, the “Q-Anon Shaman,” the shirtless man in a fur cap and horns, featured heavily as the “leader” of the “insurrection,” was actually escorted around the Capitol, outnumbered by police on multiple occasions, and even thanked the police for their work. This opens up a wide variety of questions as to what was happening in the building that day.
Another revelation by Carlson is that Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police Officer whom the Democrats perversely used as their martyr against Trump, was walking around after allegedly being hit in the head. For literally years, people believed that Sicknick was killed at the riots, or died from direct injuries shortly after. While the cause of death is not definitely disconnected from the riot, it is certainly not as cut and dry as the media made it out. In fact, the only person to die that day, unarmed rioter Ashley Babbitt, is treated by the media as a terrorist on par with a 9/11 hijacker.
Carlson also showed the differences between the video the Select January 6th Committee showed the public and more context to that video, debunking claims the Committee made. The Committee showed the dozens of people who were violent but didn’t show the hundreds of people who were simply walking around peacefully. Nearly 900 people have been arrested and charged for January 6. How many were simply trespassing on federal property, which could have been remedied by a simple fine.
The history of what happened at the Capitol Riot should be rewritten, because the initial draft of the story is categorically false. It was not a deadly insurrection perpetrated by thousands of armed rioters at the behest of former President Donald Trump. It was an ugly riot perpetrated by a few, with hundreds more going along for the ride, that was allowed to happen because Congressional leadership refused to secure the Capitol with enough police officers, that was over after around three hours, and the election was certified by the Republican President of the Senate, Mike Pence. If Democrats are afraid of that version of history, it’s because the truth is harmful to their own political prospects, nothing more.
