Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) was among those speaking out this week after a deceptive broadcast from Fox News host Tucker Carlson about the Capitol riot.
Carlson began broadcasting that new round of deception after his team received access to what apparently constituted some 44,000 hours of footage documenting what was happening at the Capitol as the riot unfolded. His idea is that some imaginarily contrived narrative about the violence and seriousness of January 6 is itself false, and concurrently, he also downplayed the very well-documented and brutal physical violence perpetrated by some of the participants, referring in the controversial episode of his show as the week started to what he termed vandalism. According to journalist Manu Raju of CNN, Romney referred to the approach Carlson took in his description of January 6 as “dangerous and disgusting.”
“Any attempt to normalize what was a violent attack on the United States Capitol only makes it more intriguing for people to do such a thing in the future,” Romney added, according to Raju, who also explained a connection in the Senator’s comments to false claims about the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School from far-right conspiracy theorist and extremist agitator Alex Jones, who helped spread the delusional idea that the shooting didn’t actually happen as alleged.
Romney also had other comments about Carlson, per another source (NBC). Romney called it “really sad to see Tucker Carlson go off the rails like that,” adding: “The American people saw what happened on January 6. They’ve seen the people that got injured, they saw the damage to the building. You can’t hide the truth by selectively picking a few minutes out of tapes and saying this is what went on. It’s so absurd. It’s nonsense.” He also addressed more of the ramifications going forward, per the same source. “It’s a very dangerous thing to do, to suggest that attacking the Capitol of the United States is in any way acceptable and it’s anything other than a serious crime, against democracy and against our country,” Romney added. “And people saw that it was violent and destructive and should never happen again. But trying to normalize that behavior is dangerous and disgusting.”
As for Jones, the cited point of comparison, his concept was the 2012 shooting was some kind of staged operation designed to help push gun control. Jones is now mired in financial turmoil after a series of findings by judges — and conclusions by juries — against him in defamation cases brought by family members of Sandy Hook victims who were harassed and essentially terrorized by evident believers in what Jones was saying. Notably, Carlson is also still harping on the idea there at least may have been federal agents or informants of some sort inciting the riot, for which there’s no credible evidence.
Romney added: “Any attempt to normalize what was a violent attack on the United States Capitol only makes it more intriguing for people to do such a thing in the future,” he said, comparing Carlson to Alex Jones’ false portrayal of the Sandy Hook shooting.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 7, 2023
Image: Gage Skidmore/ Creative Commons
