It was on Monday when the public first learned that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy provided Fox News’ Tucker Carlson with exclusive access to thousands of hours of sensitive Jan. 6 security camera footage. Initially, the California Republican ignored questions and said nothing, even as the controversial television personality confirmed the accuracy of the reporting.
A day later, we learned that the GOP leader apparently circumvented the Capitol Police when as part of his scheme. Again, McCarthy said nothing.
Yesterday, at long last, the Republican speaker finally made public comments about the burgeoning controversy — as part of an effort to turn the gambit into a fundraising opportunity.
“Patriot, you deserve the facts — all of the facts,” McCarthy wrote in his appeal to prospective donors. “I promised I would give you the truth regarding January 6th, and now I am delivering. I have released the full 44,000 hours of uncut camera surveillance footage.”
To the extent that reality still has any meaning, this was a curious boast: There’s obviously a difference between “releasing” 44,000 hours of uncut camera surveillance footage and giving exclusive access to a controversial political ally at a conservative media outlet aligned with Republican politics.
McCarthy’s fundraising pitch added, “A commitment to ALL of America requires truth and transparency over partisan games. Now, we are delivering. Would you consider chipping in $25, $50, or $100 to help House Republicans keep delivering on our commitments to America?”
I’m going to hope that the speaker wasn’t involved in writing such a nonsensical appeal. Giving Tucker Carlson exclusive access to sensitive footage, and then using the move to beg for money, is not an example of putting “truth and transparency over partisan games.” It’s actually the opposite.
But as appalling as this unseemly fundraising tactic was, it was not the only thing McCarthy had to say on the subject. The New York Times reported:
“I promised,” Mr. McCarthy said on Wednesday in a brief phone interview in which he defended his decision to grant Mr. Carlson exclusive access to the more than 40,000 hours of security footage. “I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment.”
Who wrote these talking points for the speaker? McCarthy thinks “sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment”? That might be a coherent response if he’d just released the whole package of footage to everyone, but he didn’t: McCarthy gave exclusive access to one Fox News program, which already has a dreadful record related to Jan. 6 coverage. Or as the Times put it, “[T]he sunshine Mr. McCarthy referred to will, for now, be filtered through a very specific prism — that of Mr. Carlson, a hero of the hard right who has insinuated without evidence that the Jan. 6 attack was a ‘false flag’ operation carried out by the government.” McCarthy went on to suggest to the newspaper that once Carlson has had his chance, others would gain access to the same footage. That’s nice, I suppose, though by that point, the speaker’s allied conspiracy theorist will likely have already aired cherry picked footage and presented a counter-narrative to challenge the reality of the insurrectionist violence. The Times added, “In granting exclusive access to Jan. 6 Capitol surveillance footage to a cable news host bent on rewriting the history of the attack, the speaker effectively outsourced a politically toxic re-litigation of the riot.” The fact that McCarthy is doing this while patting himself on the back for putting “truth and transparency over partisan games” adds insult to injury.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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