Fox News star Tucker Carlson ridiculously claimed on Monday that The Washington Post’s mammoth three-part investigative series on the Jan. 6 insurrection was a direct response to the just-released trailer of his “false flag” documentary on the Capitol riots.
Last week, Carlson once again sparked intense backlash and calls for his firing when he announced his new docuseries on Fox Nation, Fox News’ online subscription streaming service. In the intentionally provocative 84-second trailer for the three-part series, titled Patriot Purge, Carlson and his interview subjects warn that “the left is hunting the right” and that the insurrection may have been a “false flag” operation orchestrated by the federal government.
Furthermore, Patriot Purge sympathetically features Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was fired after attending a white nationalist conference, and Ali Alexander, a “Stop the Steal” organizer who has been subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 congressional committee over his role in the insurrection. The Tucker Carlson Originals series was also co-written by Scooter Downey, a filmmaker who’s previously worked for Pizzagate conspiracists, anti-immigrant activists, and alt-right media figures.
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Promoting his Fox Nation show Monday on Fox & Friends, Carlson first took issue with the amount of outrage his trailer sparked, claiming the “entire news media” and Congress “went completely crazy” over it. (Two Republican members of Congress blasted Carlson and Fox News for peddling “the same type of lies that provoked violence on January 6.”)
The primetime Fox News host then pointed to an extensively reported, massive feature by the Washington Post as an example of the mainstream press going overboard with its criticism of the trailer for his series. (The three episodes of Patriot Purge will be released on Fox Nation throughout this week.)
“Yesterday, The Washington Post put 75 reporters—75 reporters—on a rebuttal piece to our documentary, which they hadn't seen,” he credulously stated. “Which means that somewhere orbiting above Earth, Jeff Bezos, their boss, called in and said control the narrative. So it really tells you everything they are hysterical in the face of facts being added to this storyline. Why is it so important for them to control how we understand what happened that day?”
The preview for Carlson’s series was first aired on Wednesday night. Therefore, the Fox News host is asserting that the Post assigned 75 reporters to a feature that’s dozens of pages and 100,000 words long and turned it around in less than four days, all because of him. (Never mind that Post executive editor Sally Buzbee explained to readers on Sunday that their investigation—which dives into the “red flags” leading up to the riots and the aftermath of the insurrection—began in the spring.)
Later in the Fox & Friends segment, co-host Brian Kilmeade embraced Carlson’s conspiratorial claim that federal agents were behind the Capitol riots, saying he had found “indications that the FBI was actually pushing for this invasion?” This theory, meanwhile, has been debunked repeatedly.
Carlson naturally took his “just asking questions” approach to this topic, wondering aloud why “some of the people who apparently did coordinate the breach of the Capitol have not been indicted” before adding that “we can't get a straight answer.” (Legal experts have already pointed out that the government can’t name undercover agents as unindicted co-conspirators.)
After insisting that his Patriot Purge series is “rock-solid factually,” Carlson again claimed the Washington Post published its huge deep-dive in the events surrounding Jab. 6 as a rebuttal to his trailer.
“The idea that The Washington Post spent 75 reporters’ time rebutting a trailer tells you they don't want you to know what actually happened,” he exclaimed. “They're hysterical and ask yourself, why are they hysterical?”
Additionally, Fox & Friends giving Carlson a few minutes of airtime to promote his Fox Nation show comes amid rumblings that the network is somehow trying to distance itself from the controversial series. The Daily Dot reported that a Fox News spokesperson reached out to the outlet to make “clear” that the special is airing on the paywalled subscription service and that “Tucker Carlson Originals is not for the channel.”
