Tucker Carlson news – Fox host defends QAnon Shaman and calls Zelensky a ‘despot’

CNN’s Anderson Cooper laid into Fox News‘ Tucker Carlson during a recent segment, suggesting the TV personality would have been “wetting his pants” if he had been at the Capitol riot.

Cooper spoke with former DC Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fannone, who was assaulted during the riot. The pair discussed Carlson’s recent insistence that the rioters who attacked the Capitol and its police on 6 January 2021 in attempt to keep Donald Trump in power were simply “sightseers.”

Graig Graziosi reports on Cooper’s takedown of Carlson.

Tucker Carlson blasted his bipartisan critics in Congress as “sociopaths” during a broadcast on Wednesday and accused attorney general Merrick Garland of lying about the number of police officers killed during the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol.

Josh Marcus reports.

Eric Garcia writes:

The conservative movement and right-wing media has never really trusted Kevin McCarthy. They often see him as a chameleon devoid of any real ideology who has shifted as his party has changed. Indeed, last year, Mr Carlson said in private McCarthy “sounds like an MSNBC contributor” and called him “a puppet of the Dem Party” after The New York Times revealed recordings of his conversations with House GOP leadership after the January 6 riot.

This explains why McCarthy, now the House Speaker, elected to deliver the entire January 6 Capitol footage to Carlson. In the days after the riot, McCarthy explicitly said that Trump bore responsibility for the attack and privately berated Trump as the riot was underway. But in his desire to become House speaker, he soon backed away, flew down to Mar-a-Lago to placate Trump and opposed the creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate January 6. McCarthy giving Carlson the Jan 6 tapes further proves the point that McCarthy needs the backing of Fox to cling to political power. Passing along the Jan 6 videos boosts McCarthy’s bonafides with the Republican base.

Reporters at Fox News are frustrated by recent court documents highlighting the hypocrisy and bias of their colleagues in the network’s prime-time opinion programming, according to a recent report.

Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox News has provided an unfiltered look into the private communications and decisions of the conservative news network’s top names in the wake of the 2020 election. Those exchanges have left current journalists at the network reportedly feeling embarrassed over their association.

Several current reporters at Fox News spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity to share their frustrations.

Graig Graziosi reports.

Ahmed Baba writes:

The one thing that motivates Mitch McConnell is power. The gain or loss of it shapes his thinking and drives his decisions. So the last few election cycles, which indicated weakening Republican electoral prospects resulting in his loss of Senate Majority Leader, certainly changed McConnell’s calculus. The problem is, most of the party hasn’t changed theirs and it’s causing fissures in the GOP. In other words, Republicans are in disarray.

There is no better indication of the deep divides within the Republican Party than their reaction to Tucker Carlson’s depiction of January 6 on Fox News. After Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) handed the Fox host over 40,000 hours of Capitol footage, Carlson aired some of the footage seeking to depict the insurrection as peaceful. This caused a firestorm not only from pro-democracy liberals but from within the GOP itself. Ultimately, this is resulting in an internal debate of whether or not the party will continue to embrace the Big Lie and Donald Trump.

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