I wrote a few days ago that it seems the Right is having a harder time sticking to one set of talking points any more. Boy howdy, are we seeing that now. Tucker Carlson’s attempt to establish January 6 Trutherism is getting little support even from within Fox News.
In a remarkable segment Tuesday night, Fox News host Bret Baier and congressional reporter Chad Pergram effectively counter-programmed Tucker Carlson’s Jan. 6 whitewash from the night before.
The segment starts off as you might expect, touting Carlson’s “new” surveillance video containing images that “were hidden from the public for more than two years.” But then you can almost hear the tires screeching and the gears grinding as Baier hits the breaks and reverses course, kicking it to a pre-recorded report from Pergram on the Hill, where pushback was fierce all day.
The segment ends with an amazing and hilarious “to be sure” closing from Baier: “And to be clear, no one here at Fox News condones any of the violences that happened on Jan. 6.
Before Baier’s show, Fox News didn’t run a single segment yesterday about Tucker’s video, it says here. You’d think Rupert would rather you didn’t notice it.
Republicans in Congress nearly all pushed back against Tucker’s attempt at a Whitewash. One of the exceptions was Josh Hawley, who supported Carlson’s propaganda.
Let’s review:
Carlson also said yesterday that the video of Hawley running was “propaganda” because other senators ran from the mob also. Um, Tucker, a mob? Weren’t they just tourists? Peaceful protesters? Get your story straight, dude.
See also House GOP faces a new Jan. 6 headache, courtesy of Tucker Carlson at Politico. In brief, the Republican Congress Critters have mostly wanted January 6 to go away. They aren’t happy about having to address it again.
And then last night Dominion dumped a whole lot more court filings, which stomped all over Tucker’s stunt. Last night this was the top headline on the WaPo site:
Tucker also got blasted by all the late night comics.
Last night Aaron Blake at WaPo wrote 4 takeaways from the new Dominion-Fox lawsuit documents that’s worth reading (no paywall). And Greg Sargent writes Fox News texts point to the right’s long war on the truth (no paywall). The Fox News hosts “saw the truth as a threat to their hold on their viewers,” Sargent wrote.
This bid to capture millions in a bubble of falsehoods was also acknowledged by the news side, when a top news editor called the constant lying an “existential crisis” for Fox News ’s journalism. But as Matthew Gertz of Media Matters notes, the prime-time personalities had a clearer read than the news operation on the real source of Fox News’ success: its role as a “propaganda machine that accumulates money and power by lying to its viewers.”
Y’all knew that, of course. I appreciate that Sargent traces this effort way back to the the late 1940s and early 1950s, when leading figures on the Right made a decision to create their own media outlets while sewing distrust of “mainstream” news sources. Now they’ve got a large segment of the population so deep into alternative reality they can’t be told the truth even when the truth might better serve the Right’s purposes. Whatever those purposes still are.
In Other News — a federal judge has nullified Missouri’s gun law that attempted to nullfy federal gun laws within the state. Take all the time you need with that one. I’ve written about the Second Amendment Preservation Act a few times before, such as here.
Yesterday Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (shiver) signed a bill into law that loosens child labor protections in Arkansas.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed a bill into law on Tuesday that would roll back child labor protections in the state as Republicans across the country wage a campaign to make it easier for employers to violate child labor laws.
The law eliminates the requirement for children under 16 to show documentation of their age in order to work. Before this, employers seeking to employ a 14- or 15-year-old child had to obtain a permit showing the child’s age.
Why the bleep are Republicans suddenly wanting to send little children to work? I didn’t see that one coming.
Republicans like Sanders claim that the permit system, which dates back to the early 1900s, is an unnecessary burden on employers and — in Sanders’s words — “obsolete” in modern times.
Obsolete?
The bill signing comes just after federal officials and explosive reporting uncovered that illegal child labor is alive and well in the U.S. In February, the Department of Labor issued a $1.5 million fine to Blackstone-ownedPackers Sanitation Services for illegally employing over 100 children, some as young as 13, to clean slaughterhouses in eight states, including at least 10 children in Arkansas.
Meanwhile, The New York Timesrecently uncovered that companies that manufacture products for household-name brands are illegally packing their factories full of immigrant children, in what the publication dubbed “a new economy of exploitation.”
Let me guess — the employers are Republican campaign donors.