Commentary: The Freak-Out over Tucker’s January 6 Documentary Begins

by Julie Kelly

 

Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night played a brief trailer for his three-part documentary looking at the events of January 6. “Patriot Purge” will premiere on Fox Nation, the network’s streaming service, on November 1.

Clips hint that the film compares the prosecution of Capitol protesters and anyone associated with the events of January 6 to the initial war on terror, a wholly legitimate comparison that my reporting confirms. For example, as I explained in April, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines issued a report earlier this year warning “domestic violent extremists” pose a heightened threat to the nation. Not one for subtlety, Haines included a sketch of the U.S. Capitol in the document; House Republicans at the time blasted Haines for working outside her legal authority—the intelligence community is supposed to hunt foreign terrorists, not MAGA-supporting meemaws—to target American citizens.

Unfortunately, most Americans are unaware that the Biden regime, with a big assist from the news media, is indeed conducting a domestic war on terror aimed at the political Right.

Democrats do not want the public to hear the details of Ashli Babbitt’s shooting death at the hands of Capitol Police, or the likely role of the FBI in what happened that day, or how armed federal agents have raided Trump supporters’ homes at dawn, in front of their terrified children and horrified neighbors, and dragged out in handcuffs to face various trespassing misdemeanors.

Democrats do not want the public to know about an inhumane jail in the nation’s capital used exclusively to punish Trump supporters, who have been denied any chance at bail by ruthless government prosecutors and hostile Beltway judges. Abusive conduct by Capitol and D.C. Metro Police officers, which included attacking the crowd with flashbangs, rubber bullets, and copious amounts of mace and other chemicals, must be kept under wraps. So, too, must at least 14,000 hours of surveillance footage captured by security cameras on January 6.

Which is why the collective freak-out over the 84-second trailer was fast and furious. Journalists and lawmakers who haven’t yet seen the full documentary nonetheless convulsed into hyper-spin mode.

Philip Bump, a national correspondent for the Washington Post, immediately banged out a 1,200-word diatribe about a film he has never watched. Carlson made the movie, Bump concluded, to “prove he’s not a white nationalist,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.

Bump ironically condemns the unseen documentary as an “angry muddle” while making his own angry muddle against Carlson, Fox News, January 6 protesters and a few people highlighted in the trailer, including Revolver’s Darren Beattie, the man who blew the lid off possible FBI involvement in the chaos.

“Carlson wants to elevate the idea—the surreal idea, the deranged idea—that the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was fomented in whole or in part by the government so that it could crack down on the political right,” Bump sneered.

Now, I would far exceed my already generous word limit here by detailing all the “surreal” and “deranged” ideas the Washington Post has promoted over the past few years alone. Nicholas Sandmann, Brett Kavanaugh, and Carter Page—to name just a few—undoubtedly would jump at the chance to show Bump thousands of clippings to prove the Post, and not Tucker Carlson, is a top purveyor of outlandish conspiracy theories.

Speaking of deranged, Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the daughter of one of the architects of the first war on terror, took to social media to give her opinion on a film she has not watched, either. “It appears that @FoxNews is giving @TuckerCarlson a platform to spread the same type of lies that provoked violence on January 6,” Cheney tweeted Thursday morning. “As @FoxNews knows, the election wasn’t stolen and January 6 was not a ‘false flag’ operation.” She then tagged Fox News honchos including Rupert Murdoch and Paul Ryan to make sure they saw her tattle-tweet.

Cheney was soon joined by Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), her Republican colleague on the January 6 select committee. Kinzinger, who cried after the testimony of four police officers during a July hearing, echoed Cheney’s outrage. “Anyone working for @FoxNews must speak out.  This is disgusting. It appears @foxnews isn’t even pretending anymore,” he tweeted about a film he also hasn’t seen.

Accusing Carlson of promoting “cop killers,” a flat-out lie since no police officer died as a result of the protest on January 6, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) revealed that Officer Michael Fanone was “pissed,” which seems to be nothing out of the ordinary for the D.C. cop who graced the front page of Time magazine a few months ago and does little else but visit cable news shows to explain why he is pissed off that particular day. “RT if Tucker should talk to the heroes of Jan. 6, not just the terrorists,” Swalwell tweeted.

One of Carlson’s Fox News colleagues, Geraldo Rivera, lashed out on Twitter, mocking Carlson’s suggestion that January 6 was a false flag operation. “Tucker’s wonderful, he’s provocative, he’s original, but man oh man,” Rivera told a New York Times reporter on Thursday. “There are some things that you say that are more inflammatory and outrageous and uncorroborated. And I worry that—and I’m probably going to get in trouble for this—but I’m wondering how much is done to provoke, rather than illuminate.”

Rivera continued. “Messing around with Jan. 6 stuff . . . the record to me is pretty damn clear, that there was a riot that was incited and encouraged and unleashed by Donald Trump.”

And therein lies the real controversy about Carlson’s documentary. The original narrative about January 6—it was an armed insurrection carried out by white supremacist militias at the behest of Donald Trump over the “Big Lie” of election fraud leading to the deaths of police officers while nearly toppling our democracy—is not to be disturbed no matter how many facets of that original narrative have been shattered.

Further, any suggestion that the FBI, a corrupt, partisan agency with a proven track record of acting at the behest of Democratic Party interests, was at all instrumental in what happened that day, or instigating the violence ahead of time, is strictly verboten. Never mind that even the New York Times reported that FBI informants were working with members of the Proud Boys before and during January 6 or the numerous questions raised by Beattie or the jaw-dropping revelations of the FBI’s key role in the plot to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer last year—no questions allowed.

Next thing you know, the media will accuse January 6 skeptics of promoting “Russian disinformation.”

In fact, this all feels like the lead-up to the release of the Nunes memo, the 2018 document that connected the Steele dossier to the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign through Fusion GPS and confirmed the dossier served as the basis for four FISA warrants on the Trump campaign. Before Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) issued the report, over the objection of Republicans such as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham along with FBI Director Christopher Wray, the media was apoplectic.

Nunes was accused of everything from acting as a Russian stooge to being a traitor and a dunce. How dare a sitting congressman go to “war” with the FBI? “The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests—no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s,” McCain tweeted on the day Nunes’ memo was released.

Nunes, of course, was proven right. I suspect Carlson’s documentary will act as the January 6 version of the Nunes memo. And the reason why the people who peddled Russiagate are the same people losing their minds over an unseen documentary on January 6 isn’t that they don’t know what the film will show—it is rather that they know exactly what it will show. McCain and company fought the release of the Nunes memo for the same reason.

On November 1, no matter how hard they’re trying to keep the truth concealed, the public can start to see for themselves.

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Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. She is the author of Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried―And Failed―To Take Down the President. Her past work can be found at The Federalist and National Review. She also has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and Genetic Literacy Project. She is the co-host of ‘Happy Hour podcast with Julie and Liz.’ She is a graduate of Eastern Illinois University and lives in suburban Chicago with her husband and two daughters.
Photo “Capitol 6 riots” by Tucker Carlson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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