Friday, March 24, 2023 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
The Republican Party, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy leading the way, is attempting to portray Jan. 6, 2021, as a peaceful political gathering.
McCarthy is using Fox News and host Tucker Carlson as his messenger.
McCarthy has provided Carlson with 44,000 hours of video taken Jan. 6, when rioters swept over the Capitol “fighting like hell,” as instructed by their leader, former President Donald Trump.
It should be noted and remembered that McCarthy engaged in a telephone shouting match with Trump that day.
As related by McCarthy to fellow Republicans, he told Trump the rioters were, “trying to kill me.”
In a House Republican leadership call Jan. 10, 2021, McCarthy said in regards to Trump: “I’ve had it with this guy. What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it.”
Then the MAGA hats unleashed their fury and McCarthy, obsessed with becoming House speaker, reversed course.
Now Republicans are trying to sell the new narrative.
Carlson chooses to show only portions of the film that show people in the Capitol before all hell broke loose, and says this proves there was no riot.
If Carlson was reporting on Pearl Harbor in 1941, he would show films of planes leaving aircraft carriers and flying south toward Hawaii, then show the same planes flying back north and landing on the carriers.
He would then proclaim that this is proof that there was no attack on Pearl Harbor — just a peaceful air tour of the islands.
