On Friday’s broadcast of “Newsroom,” CNN anchor Brianna Keilar went after Fox News host Tucker Carlson for his criticisms of her use of the word “insurrection” while describing the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.
Keilar said, “The attack on the nation’s Capitol was a deadly uprising. It was a violent riot, and it was an insurrection. It was sedition. It was incited by the president calling his supporters to action. … So, let’s call it what it is, something that some people are having a harder time with than others, like this guy on planet Fox.”
Keilar then played a clip where Carlson said, “It wasn’t insurrection. It was a political protest that got completely out of control, as we said before, because the president recklessly encouraged it, and that’s wrong. But it was not an insurrection.”
Keilar then said, “It was an insurrection. Take Merriam-Webster’s word for it. Insurrection; an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.”
She continued that the rioters “are people who have renounced allegiance to their government, should it not be helmed by Donald Trump, knocking down barriers, knocking down gates, pushing police out of the way. Police would be the civil authority as described in the definition of insurrection. They broke windows and doors. They vandalized offices. The perpetrators forced members of Congress to take cover in fear of their lives. Those lawmakers are the ‘civil authority’ and the established government, as the dictionary states, that they are revolting against.”
Keilar added, “So, it’s interesting that when the crowd, in this case, is full of almost entirely white Trump-supporting rioters, Fox’s Tucker Carlson described it as a ‘political protest that got…out of control,’ especially when this is how he described Black Lives Matter protests and looting this past summer after the death of George Floyd.”
In the clips, Carlson said, “BLM and Antifa, crazed ideologues, grifters, criminals, anti-social thugs with no stake in society, nothing better to do than hurt people and destroy things.” And “These are not protests. This is not about George Floyd. It’s not about systemic racism, whatever that is. America is not a racist country.”
Keilar responded, “Tucker Carlson rolls his eyes at the idea of systemic racism, at white privilege, but perhaps he should roll those eyes on over to a mirror. It is entirely fantastical to think that crowds of black or brown Americans would have been treated as the mostly white insurrectionists at the Capitol were on Wednesday. He doesn’t treat them equally.”
She continued, “[H]e’s trying to eliminate the present, and he is spoon-feeding it to millions of hungry viewers who tune into his show.”
She added, “[H]e is part of the illness, a propagandist, a liar, a parasite.”
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