House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) said Tuesday that he does not regret providing Fox News’s Tucker Carlson with tapes from the January 6 Capitol riot after GOP colleagues slammed the host’s portrayal of the day on his show.
“No,” McCarthy told reporters when asked if he regretted handing the footage over to Carlson, according to the Hill. “I said at the very beginning, transparency. And so what I wanted to produce for everybody is exactly what I said. The people could actually look at it and see what’s gone on that day.”
On Monday, Carlson played the video for his viewers, suggesting that the characterization of the incident as an attack has been misguided.
The video “does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” he said. “By controlling the images that you were allowed to view from January 6, they controlled how the public understood that day. They could lie about that day, and you would never know the difference.”
McCarthy on Tuesday claimed he had no knowledge of Carlson’s televised comments on the matter, doubling down on his belief that it was important to give the media access to the tapes so the public could be better informed about how the incident transpired.
“I don’t know what Tucker Carlson said,” he told the press. “And just like all of you cover news, people who are able to interpret the way they want. But I think the fairest way to do it instead of trying to clip it into something else, allow all the transparency so everybody can see so Jan. 6 never happens again.”
Over in the Senate, GOP leadership was much quicker to condemn Carlson’s narration of the riot, which the January 6 committee determined was an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“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 at the Capitol thinks,” Republican Senate minority leader McConnell told reporters Tuesday.