Wednesday, veteran Fox News Channel personality Brit Hume dismissed mainstream media and Democrat reaction to network colleague Tucker Carlson’s airing of previously unreleased footage from the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot that has apparently called into question a manufactured narrative of an “insurrection.”
Hume told host Bret Baier those reactions were hysterical and bordered on “unconstitutional” censorship.
Partial transcript as follows:
BAIER: You know, there’s been a lot of reaction. You saw, Chuck Schumer saying that Fox should say, don’t put Tucker on the air another night. You’ve saw different commentary shows Whoopi Goldberg and others saying all kinds of things should happen.
What’s your reaction to all of this and the fallout from it?
HUME: What strikes me about this is, what a poor job, the January 6 committee did. They had access to all of this information, and they were very, very, very selective in what they presented.
And they had a committee that was composed entirely of people chosen by Nancy Pelosi, or approved by Nancy Pelosi. The Republicans didn’t really have a say on that committee, and no one on that committee did any serious cross examination. Nor did the member — any members of that committee insist on the videotape that we’ve been seeing from Tucker Carlson be aired as part of what the committee was doing.
Tucker was able to construct an entirely different narrative from that which was presented by the committee. All of this would have been unnecessary. If we’d had a normally composed, properly balanced committee on January 6th. The opportunity would have been there to present a video that Tucker use as well as what the members — other members of the committee wanted to use, and this all would have been over and over and done, and behind us.
They chose not to do that. Kevin McCarthy, who’s chosen members were not allowed to be on that committee is now done, what he’s done. We see there is another side of the story that was never presented by the committee.
BAIER: What about the reaction to the characterization and the calls for — well, I mean, there is frankly calls for censorship about talking about those things.
HUME: Oh, yes. Look, Tucker made an argument based on the — on the tape that he showed, which he’s perfectly entitled to do. Normally, of course, this would be done in the, in the — in the course of the — of the committee’s business, but it wasn’t. So, now, we have what we have.
Much of the reaction seems to me to be hysterical, bordering on, you know, unconstitutional assertions of censorship and so on.
So, my view of this is that sooner or later all this videotape will be out, and the public may have a better chance to make a proper assessment of what happened that day.
Basically, it comes down to this question, Bret. Was it a riot? Which I think it was, and which I think, Tucker said as well, it was. Or was it really an insurrection that threatened the Republic, as Bennie Thompson put it. We put it. We came as he put it critically close to losing our democracy that day.
I don’t think the evidence supports that. Although, it was certainly had elements of violence. It was certainly a riot and an ugly one. Insurrection? I doubt the evidence fully seem will support that.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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