MSNBC host Ari Melber pulled no punches on Thursday in criticizing Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) recent decision to give exclusive access to 41,000 hours of surveillance footage from the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol to Tucker Carlson. Notably, however, Melber used Carlson attacking McCarthy as evidence to make his point.
Melber began by showing a past clip of Carlson characterizing the events of Jan. 6th:
Of all the things that January 6th was, it was definitely not a violent terrorist attack. It wasn’t an insurrection. An outbreak of mob violence, a forgettably minor outbreak by recent bystanders. You see people walking around and taking pictures. They don’t look like terrorists. They look like tourists.
“They don’t look like terrorists to him because I guess he has an idea of what a terrorist looks like. But they’re convicted seditionists. Sedition is domestic terror against your own government rather than, say, a foreign government,” Melber noted, adding:
Now, that person you just heard, Mr. Carlson, is who House Speaker McCarthy is elevating on an exclusive basis to review the attack footage, an attack on McCarthy’s own workplace and his own colleagues.
And we know McCarthy is faking all this right now. And I don’t say that lightly. I won’t say that if I can’t prove it to you, I won’t just say it if I suspect that he’s not telling the truth, that’s not good enough.
We know on this particular story. In the heat of the moment during that attack, when no one knew how bad it would get or if the Trump fans would effectively go further and murder members of Congress or assassinate Mike Pence as they publicly clamored for. In that moment, McCarthy condemned the violence, publicly calling on those Republican attackers to stop.
“I completely condemn the violence in the capital. What we’re currently watching unfold is un-American. I am. I’m disappointed. I’m sad. This is not what our country should look like. This is not who we are. This is not the First Amendment. This has to stop and this has to stop now,” McCarthy then says in a clip from Jan. 6th as the attack was unfolding.
“That was what he said,” Melber replied, adding:
That was McCarthy’s truth. By the way, in court, that kind of statement is actually deemed more credible, an excited utterance, because in panic and fear, the courts have found that’s when the truth might seep out, even from someone like McCarthy. Now he’s contradicting all of this.
Right now he’s elevating Carlson, the insurrection-minimizing host, who is one of several hosts under heat right now. By the way, for the alleged defamation in the related lies that fed the insurrection. This is clearly about politics. Not truth. Little on the safety of his colleagues in the capital. He’s considered that at all. McCarthy is literally already fundraising off this gambit, giving the stuff to Tucker.
“He’s trying to publicly link himself closer to Tucker Carlson now. You might stop and say, okay, Ari, but aren’t top Republicans always tight with Fox News hosts? Why would the Republican speaker, who is the top Republican in government right now, need to further that alliance?” Melber continued.
“Well, again, the answer is in the evidence. You can’t just assume that all Fox hosts and Republican politicians are tired, even if they might publicly admit they vote the same way. And in a twist, Carlson has actually been blasting McCarthy as a Republican in name only, telling viewers McCarthy is a puppet of the Democratic Party,” Melber argued.
“You could see it written out on screen. He also calls him a Democrat or an MSNBC analyst or a D.C. lobbyist with no real core,” Melber noted before playing a supercut of Carlson attacking McCarthy.
“Congressman Kevin McCarthy, a man who in private turns out sounds like an MSNBC contributor. We will have a Republican Congress led by a puppet of the Democratic Party. He’s, in fact, ideologically agnostic. He’s flexible. His real constituency is the lobbying community in Washington,” Carlson says.
“Carlson views McCarthy as a flexible stand in and a political puppet who responds to power and will say what his puppet master demands,” Melber summarizes, concluding:
One day it could be the donors, another it could be Matt Gaetz, another it could be a Fox host. And Carlson’s attacks have engineered a kind of meta-demonstration of the alleged puppetry. With McCarthy making an unusual show of fealty to his on air tormentor. Maybe in the hope of never seeing a Fox News banner about being a puppet again. Which is a very puppety way to try to avoid being dubbed a puppet when you think about it.
Watch the full clip above via MSNBC
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