Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell spoke out on Tuesday about the Tucker Carlson show on Fox News, saying “It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that's completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.”
McConnell was referring to a one-page statement by Chief Tom Manger, the head of the U.S. Capitol Police. In that statement, Manger calls Carlson’s conclusions “offensive and misleading,” and proceeded to list falsehoods from the show, shared by NPR (who had obtained a copy of the statement):
- Carlson pushed “outrageous and false” allegations that officers acted as "tour guides." Manger refuted that characterization saying that officers who were severely outnumbered were using “de-escalation tactics to try to talk rioters into getting each other to leave the building.”
- The program “cherry-picked from the calmer moments” outside the violent attack to push a false narrative dismissing the violence of the siege.
- The Fox News host claimed fallen officer Brian Sicknick’s death had “nothing to do with his heroic actions on January 6.” The department maintains, Manger wrote, “that had Officer Sicknick not fought valiantly for hours on the day he was violently assaulted, Officer Sicknick would not have died the next day.”
McConnell said that he was “in alignment” with Manger’s statement.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says Tucker Carlson's whitewashing of the Capitol insurrection was a “mistake.”
— The Recount (@therecount) March 7, 2023
"My concern is how it was a depicted ... Clearly, the chief of the Capitol Police ... correctly describes what most of us witnessed firsthand on January 6th." pic.twitter.com/nCRXOjujxb
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