Kevin, Tucker and the Weird Big Lie

The stunt that Kevin McCarthy pulled, releasing hours of Capitol video to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, may be backfiring.

I think part of the problem is that too many of use recall Jan. 6, 2021. Trying to reframe it now as peaceful patriots simply visiting our seat of government is to completely miscast events we watched unfold. It seemed like a violent insurrection meant to gum up the work of democracy only because it was a violent insurrection meant to gum up the works of democracy.

Take, for instance, this clip, in which Tucker says video “proves” a Capitol police officer was not a victim of violence:

But wait, there’s more. As PolitiFact points out, in an essay on seven lies pushed by Carlson, the video doesn’t prove what Tucker claims it proves.

Well, as violent historic events go, the Jan. 6 riot was not all that organized. It wasn’t 9/11 nor Pearl Harbor—the death toll was much more modest, the Capitol was damaged but not burned as it was when British tourists wearing red coats visited early in the 19th century. But it was not peaceful, either, and it was an attempt to shut down a peaceful transfer of power following a legal election.

Let’s say it again. The 2020 election was not stolen. Joe Biden won. It’s OK to not be OK with that, but it’s not OK to not acknowledge it as a reality. When you lose an election, you dust yourself off, pick yourself up and vow to come back in the next election.

You don’t march on the Capitol and demand a redo.

And if you’re the Speaker of the House, and you want to go against the advice of law enforcement and release a bunch of raw video form that day, at least you release that video to all media all at once, not some weird alt-universe commentator like Tucker Carlson.

What McCarthy did, and how Tucker used that video, is not transparency. It is the opposite. It’s ink in the water. It’s a big lie, parading around like it was truth.

We are always better off if we at least can agree on the basic facts, and the problem with Tucker and Trump’s Big Lie is it remains a Big Lie. And Jan. 6, 2021, was a shameful day. People did die. Democracy was in danger. And it still is.