The White House escalated its criticism of Fox News and Tucker Carlson over his portrayal of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack, contending the anchor has lost credibility.
"As it relates to the Tucker Carlson question, we agree with Fox News's own attorneys and executives who have repeatedly stressed in multiple courts of law that Tucker Carlson is not credible when it comes to this issue," press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday, referring to court cases Fox News faces over its 2020 election coverage.
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President Joe Biden "condemned" Carlson's framing of "the unprecedented attack," particularly after police officers were injured in the incident, Jean-Pierre added. Jean-Pierre repeated that officers "lost their lives." U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died from two strokes the day after he responded to the riot. The District of Columbia's chief medical examiner described his death as natural but commented that "all that transpired played a role in his condition."
Jean-Pierre, again, declined to directly criticize House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for sharing 41,000 hours of security footage from Jan. 6 with Tucker.
"The president believes we need to get to the bottom of what happened on a very dark day for democracy," she said. "We should be calling that out."
Republicans joined Democrats in denouncing Carlson's specials this week, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC). Tillis, for example, dismissed the segment as "bulls—t."
"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 told reporters.
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Carlson acknowledged Monday some of the rioters were bad actors. But he said that most of the people in the Capitol on Jan. 6 were peaceful and were “sightseers,” not “insurrectionists.”
"The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress," he added. "Instead, it shows police escorting people through the building."