Row, Row, Row Your Sinking Boat

Yesterday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) posted a tweet which read – “My favorite painting is Washington Crossing the Delaware. I have a giant version of it in my office—to remind everyone who sees it that there is no obstacle Americans can't overcome if we row together in the same direction.”

And the same day, this same Kevin McCarthy handed over 40,000 hours of security footage on the January 6th Insurrection to, of all people, Tucker Carlson of Fox “News.”

So much for rowing in the same direction.

And so much for faux-transparency when you give the material to only one network.  Whoever the network is.  If Nancy Pelosi had given all the January 6 security footage to only MSNBC, it would have been the opposite of transparency.  And would have been wrong-headed.  (Side note to people who hate Nancy Pelosi:  she did not give any footage to MSNBC.  Not even 40-seconds, let alone 40,000 hours.  And also, another difference:  the Kremlin didn't order Russian media to feature the network.)

Moreover --

This is the same Tucker Carlson who, lest we forget, was mentioned in a leaked memo from the Kremlin to Russian media that said it is “essential” for them to feature Tucker Carlson, because he was so supportive of Russian positions.  (For those who don’t follow the news closely, Russia has been the enemy of the United States for over 75 years.  Whose premier once said, “We will destroy you!”)

And you don’t even have to follow news closely if you only go all the way back to just last week.  That’s when Carlson was outed as being a monumental liar for what he says in private trashing Trump as a "demonic force, a destroyer" and in public kissing his rear and enabling his Insurrection efforts to the degree of insisting “it was definitely not a violent terrorist attack, it wasn’t an Insurrection,” nor even that was it “an outbreak of mob violence,” but rather just a “forgettably minor outbreak by recent standards” where “you see people walking around taking pictures; they don’t look like terrorists, they look like tourists.”

Yes, he really said all that.  Tourists. 

But in private, we now know from released emails that Carlson said that Trump’s lawyer “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.”  And yet only weeks later invited deranged conspiratorialist leading sponsor Mike Lindell – his show’s leading sponsor – to appear on his program and repeat those insane lies.

He slammed what Trump’s lawyers Powell and Rudy Giuliani were spewing, saying that “It’s unbelievably offensive to me.”  He called their charges 'ludicrous' and 'off the rails'.  Yet still featured the charges on his show.  We know, too, from the release of his emails that he tried to get a Fox report fired (his word) for telling the actual truth, saying she was hurting the company’s stock price!

And this is the person who Kevin McCarthy gave exclusive access to the 40,000 hours of January 6 security footage.

As Adam Schiff noted in a tweet --

“Kevin McCarthy turned over Jan 6 videos to right-wing propagandist Tucker Carlson.

“A man who spews Kremlin talking points. Suggests Jan 6 was a false flag. And spreads the Big Lie.

“Make no mistake: This isn’t about transparency, it’s about fueling dangerous conspiracy theories.”

And make no mistake, it’s not just that Kevin McCarthy exclusively turned over 40,000 hours of January 6 security footage to, of all people, Russian apologist Tucker Carlson, but to Tucker Carlson on Fox “News.”  The company currently treading water, struggling for its safety in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit over it’s known lies about the non-existent election “fraud” in the 2020 election.

The lies that the network has poured out to its viewers were revealed last week in other private emails made public, completely undercutting their public faux-“outrage” at everything they derided in private as untrue.

In private, Fox producer Alex Pfeiffer wrote that “many on ‘our side’ are being reckless demagogues right now.”  On-air personality Laura Ingraham wrote in private that “Sidney [Powell] is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”  Maria Bartiromo presented supposed “evidence” about supposed election “fraud” that she got from a woman who – we now know from private Fox exchanges -- described herself as “internally decapitated” and capable of “time travel in a semi-conscious state.”

And more – much more, all of which we now know from these released private documents about what Fox “News” actually believed, but on the air they lied about what they knew was non-existent fraud and fomented the Insurrection.

And this is the network who Kevin McCarthy has exclusively given access to 40,000 hours of security footage on January 6.

Kevin McCarthy, the weak-backed Speaker who himself criticized Trump in public and in private – and then was called down to Mar-a-Lago, clearly chastised by Trump, and almost immediately did an about-face and has enabled all efforts to block investigations into the truth of the Insurrection to overthrow democracy...which he himself initially noted.  And who now also demeans himself by bizarrely protecting the clownish serial con man liar “George Santos.” That Kevin McCarthy who says “there is no obstacle Americans can't overcome if we row together in the same direction.”

Alas, it makes it much harder to protect gun safety and abortion that the vast majority of Americans support, and protect Medicare, Social Security and the Affordable Care Act that the vast majority of Americans support. And decry Insurrection that...oh, you know -- when the Kevin McCarthy and the Republican won't row the same direction, but instead paddle as hard as they can against the current upstream.  And hand over 40,000 HOURS of January 6 security footage exclusively to those who said it wasn’t an Insurrection at all, but just…tourists.