CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone on Tuesday reacted to Fox News host Tucker Carlson putting his characteristic spin on the events of Jan. 6 while playing security footage from that day, with Cooper offering some amusing imagery of Carlson had he been surrounded by Trump supporters then.
“The idea of Tucker Carlson being in that mob that day and not wetting his pants is hard to imagine,” Cooper said. “I find it hard to understand somebody who has never put himself in harm’s way in any capacity for anyone else or on reporting a story, and yet has the audacity to try to rewrite history.”
Fanone, whose PTSD from being beaten at the riots Carlson has formerly scoffed at, agreed.
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Carlson is “by his own admission an entertainer, not a journalist,” Fanone said. “And on top of that he has just proven himself to be Donald Trump’s chief propagandist and that’s all this was.” (Carlson, despite his on-air praise for Trump and his questioning of the 2020 election, privately said two days before Jan. 6 that he hated Trump “passionately,” according to documents released Tuesday as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News.)
Of the footage that Carlson acquired from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Fanone chalked it up to an attempt by McCarthy “to appeal to or appease” Trump.
McCarthy defended giving the exclusive footage to Tucker Carlson Tonight after the Fox host’s Monday night show, telling reporters at the Capitol Tuesday that he did so in the interests of “transparency.”
Similarly, Carlson on Tuesday insisted that his narrative of Jan. 6 is supported by the footage. Reacting to senators of both parties speaking out against it, Carlson urged viewers to “keep a list” of their names. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who said Carlson wanted him to appear on his show, wrote on Twitter that he would do so after Carlson “admits to his viewers live on air that he has been lying to them about the 2020 elections and about what happened on January 6th.”
