Cheering on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday night for opposing a bipartisan deal struck to form a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection, Fox News host Tucker Carlson called the investigation a “farce” while once again downplaying the severity of the deadly Capitol riot.
McCarthy announced on Tuesday morning that he would not support the proposal even though Republican negotiators had reached an agreement just last week with Democrats on the details of the commission. Throwing his own negotiators under the bus, the Trump-boosting lawmaker offered up tepid excuses to justify his opposition.
Later that day, insisting that his primetime Fox News program is “not a partisan show,” Carlson noted that he recently criticized McCarthy on his show after he discovered the California congressman was renting a room from GOP pollster and strategist Frank Luntz.
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“When politicians do something right, we want to say so,” Carlson said. “And Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader in the House, did something right.”
“He said he will not support a commission—a 9/11-style commission—to investigate the insurrection of Jan. 6,” he added, in a dramatic and mocking tone.
The Fox News host—who has repeatedly brushed off the seditious riots as nothing more than a “political protest that got out of hand”—then reminded his audience that the Capitol rioters were just “a bunch of middle-aged people deep in credit card debt” who teamed up with a “guy dressed like Chewbacca.”
Acknowledging that House Minority Whip Steve Scalise also doesn’t support the commission, Carlson said the reason they were opposing the investigation into the events of that day is “it’s a farce.”
“It’s a complete farce. It’s partisan as hell and it’s fake. Don’t play along with the fraud,” Carlson snarled.
After playing a short video clip of insurrectionists inside the Capitol telling people to be “peaceful,” Carlson said, “That’s one view of the insurrection,” before complaining that the proposed Jan. 6 commission doesn’t also center on Black Lives Matter and antifa.
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this commission is about finding the truth, but she is the same person who supported BLM and the antifa riots over the summer,” the host declared. “We are not guessing about that. She defended antifa when they destroyed Portland!”
Notably, one of McCarthy’s excuses for opposing the commission is that it only focuses on the Capitol invasion and doesn’t also examine the riots associated with Black Lives Matter protests last year.
“In a civilized country, you punish people equally. That’s the opposite of now,” Carlson fumed.
The Fox News star then took aim at Rep. John Katko (R-NY), the lead Republican negotiator on the creation of the commission and a top lieutenant of McCarthy’s. Noting that Katko and dozens of other Republicans may buck GOP leadership and vote for the commission this week, Carlson seemingly called for Republican voters to punish them.
“They are voting to give Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden more power, power they do not deserve. Power they did not win in November,” Carlson said. “Republican voters deserve to know the name of every Congressional Republican that votes for this farce.”
“They should know which representative is playing along with this poisonous hoax,” he concluded. “We hope they will learn soon.”
