By Bill McCarthy, PolitiFact.com
Tucker Carlson:
There s no evidence that white supremacists were responsible for what happened on Jan. 6. That s a lie.”
PolitiFact s ruling: False
Here s why: Fox News host Tucker Carlson downplayed the involvement of racially motivated extremist groups in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, falsely suggesting that the mob of pro-Trump rioters who violently stormed the building did not include white supremacists. There s no evidence that white supremacists were responsible for what happened on Jan. 6. That s a lie, Carlson said Feb. 22 on his TV show. And contrary to what you ve been hearing, there s also no evidence this was a, quote, armed insurrection.
This story is part of an ongoing collaboration between ProPublica and FRONTLINE that includes an upcoming documentary.
Hours after the attack on the Capitol ended, a group calling itself the Last Sons of Liberty posted a brief video to Parler, the social media platform, that appeared to show members of the organization directly participating in the uprising. Footage showed someone with a shaky smartphone charging past the metal barricades surrounding the building. Other clips show rioters physically battling with baton-wielding police on the white marble steps just outside the Capitol.
Before Parler went offline its operations halted at least temporarily when Amazon refused to continue to host the network the Last Sons posted numerous statements indicating that group members had joined the mob that swarmed the Capitol and had no regrets about the chaos and violence that unfolded on Jan. 6. The Last Sons also did some quick math: The government had suffered only one fatality, U.
The GOP’s Resentment Theater Details
OTHER WORDS-President Biden recently became the first president to condemn white supremacy by name in an inaugural address. Then some Republicans got mad because, they say, it’s an attack on them.
He’s “calling us racists,” Rand Paul complained. “According to the left, supporting border security and celebrating July 4 could make you a white supremacist,” Tucker Carlson claimed. “I was offended” by “the racism thing,” Karl Rove added.
These complaints are disingenuous.
First, consider President Biden’s exact words. After alluding to the racial justice protests over the summer, Biden turned to warn of “a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.”
As security is ramped up in Washington, D.C., and state capitols across the U.S., the FBI is warning of more potential violence in the lead-up to Joe Biden s inauguration on January 20. Federal authorities have arrested over 100 people who took part in last week s deadly insurrection at the Capitol, and The Washington Post reports that dozens of people on a terrorist watch list including many white supremacists were in Washington on the day of the insurrection. This was something that had been coming for a long time, ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson, who covers right-wing extremism, says of the January 6 riot. If you looked at the rhetoric online … it was all about revolution, it was all about death to tyrants, it was all about civil war.