Capitol Police Chief Blasts Tucker Carlson For “Offensive And Misleading” Airing Of January 6th Footage
07.03.2023 - 23:09
/ deadline.com
The chief of Capitol Police blasted Tucker Carlson’s characterization of the January 6th attack on the Capitol, calling the Fox News host’s conclusions “offensive and misleading.”
In an internal memo, chief Thomas Manger wrote, “The program conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video. The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy provided Carlson and his staff with access to more than 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from January 6. That drew an outcry from Democrats, who claimed that it would jeopardize Capitol security and that Carlson would use it to try to present a revisionist history of what happened that day.
On his show, Carlson used footage of protesters wandering through the halls of the Capitol to try to downplay the attack.
“These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers. Footage from inside the Capitol overturns the story you have heard about January 6,” Carlson said.
In his letter, Manger wrote that “one false allegation is that our officers helped the rioters and acted as ‘tour guides.’ This is outrageous and false. The Department stands by the officers in the video that was shown last night. I don’t have to remind you how outnumbered our officers were on January 6. Those officers did their best to use descalation tactics to try to talk rioters into getting each other to leave the building.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also criticized Carlson, holding up Manger’s letter in agreement.
“My concern is how it was depicted…Clearly the chief of Capitol Police, in my view, correctly describes what most of us witnessed first hand on January