MSNBC anchor Nicole Wallace said on Tuesday on her show “Deadline” that Fox News hosts, who she claimed were mostly Republican men, had “whored themselves out to a delusion” by “mocking” the police that responded to the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Discussing Fox News coverage, Wallace said, “I’m grappling to find family-friendly words since it’s 4 p.m. in the east, 1 p.m. in the west, but these men, mostly in the Republican Party, you know, have whored themselves out to a delusion. Let’s be really blunt here. There are a whole lot of people in Fox News’ audience who might sort of be in the communities of law enforcement officers more than in our viewing audience. That’s just the sort of demographic history of who watches what. And the fact that on those networks, they weren’t ignored. They were highlighted and mocked. These men were mocked. Their injuries were denied, and their trauma seems to be ongoing.”
MSNBC contributor former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said, “The suicides are direct evidence of the trauma that the police officers endured that day. The other thing we have to remember here is police officers in America. They do not expect hand-to-hand combat.”
McCaskill added, “Not only has Fox News hosts gone after these brave men and women, but elected senators are going after them.”
Wallace said, “I just want to add a little bit of reporting from The Washington Post…This is what they are right about Ron Johnson is suggesting the FBI knew more than it has said. ‘Right-wing website first claimed in June that undercover agents were among those that breached the Capitol, allegations that spread quickly through the conservative media echo system. The claims were based on the false assumption that those names as unindicted co-conspirators were federal agents or informants. Fox News host Tucker Carlson, for instance, said on his June 15 show that ‘In potentially every single case they were FBI objectives.'”
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