Tucker Carlson tells Glenn Beck: Jan. 6 Committee didn't merely distort facts, but fabricated full falsehoods — 'blew my mind'



Tucker Carlson joined nationally syndicated radio host and co-founder of Blaze Media Glenn Beck on his radio show Wednesday to discuss the uncut and narrative-destabilizing footage of the Jan. 6 protests, which the Fox News host has been playing on his show.

TheBlaze previously noted that much of the footage that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) granted Carlson access to appears to contradict key claims made by members of the Jan. 6 committee and dutifully circulated by the liberal media.

Carlson noted that extra to distortions — such as the deceptive edits used to smear Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) as a coward or the addition of screaming sounds to videos originally recorded without audio — the Jan. 6 committee advanced lies wholly severed from the reality of what actually happened at the Capitol in order to shape a politically expedient narrative.

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Dark forces and bold lies

"You called the January 6 committee members liars," said Beck, referencing both Carlson's commentary Monday and committee members' promotion of the claim that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick had been killed as the result of injuries sustained that day.

"Do you ... make the case that they're liars? They didn't just, you know, fib a bit and eat around the corners — that these are full-fledged liars?" asked Beck.

Carlson replied, "Well, that was the stunning part to me. I've been in Washington my whole life. And my dad worked for the government. So I had a kind of root-level trust in government. ... My default setting is they're not lying about anything. I never assumed that."

"So I was shocked to learn that they were lying intentionally," continued the Fox News host. "We have a very specific way of knowing that. ... January 6 committee researchers looked at video. They bookmarked it. They left an electronic mark on the video they watched. So we know what they watched. And then we watched it."

Carlson noted that "there is video of [Jacob] Chansley, of Ray Epps, and of Brian Sicknick, that we know they watched, that was not included in the report, that was never mentioned in the hearings. A year and a half, a thousand witnesses, 850-page report, and this video, which overturns the story they were telling, proves it was a lie."

For Jacob Chansley, the so-called "QAnon Shaman," this lie proved life-changing.

Chansley's former lawyer recently claimed he had not seen the newly released footage, which could have aided his client against federal charges. Whereas his former client had been depicted as the deranged leader of a violent mob, the footage played on Carlson's show revealed that he was escorted around the Capitol by police without incident, reported Fox News Digital.

Chansley was ultimately charged with "knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds" and sentenced to four years in prison.

There was evidently no saving Carlson's childhood presumption of government officials' forthrightness in the wake of reviewing the tapes of Chansley and others: "We know that they lied. And that just blew my mind."

While Carlson had no trouble believing that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) would deal in lies, noting that he "is a force of darkness," the cable host found it troubling that former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), whom he's known for decades, was also a purveyor of falsehoods.

"I just always assumed she disagrees on the issues with me. No, it turns out Liz Cheney is actually, affirmatively a liar," said Carlson. "She knew information. She withheld it because it challenged the lie that she was telling to the public."

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Big lies

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently borrowed a phrased coined by Adolf Hitler to condemn Carlson and McCarthy by extension for showing narrative-challenging Jan. 6 footage, suggesting that it "enabled the Big Lie and has further eroded away at our precious democracy."

Carlson suggested to Beck that this is mere projection; that the grand deception was played by those now apoplectic about his showcase of previously omitted or altered footage.

"This — this is an event that was a complex event [with] many facets. And they simplified it immediately into a good versus evil tale, as they do with everything. Partly because they lack nuance and imagination, but partly because this was a tool they were using for a purpose. It was a cudgel they were using to beat down their opponents and grab more power for themselves," said Carlson.

"In effect, what it did was change the definition of terrorism, from something that exists in other countries and is aimed at us, to Republican voters, populist voters. ... Bernie Sanders voters, Trump voters. Anybody who questions the legitimacy of the current power holders is now redefined not as a political opponent, but as a terrorist."

TheBlaze recently reported that prior to Tucker Carlson's initial exhibition of footage calling into question the claims and intentions of those on the January 6 committee, leftist journalist Chris Hedges penned an article condemning the Democratic establishment for "polarizing the country and shredding civil liberties."

Hedges appeared to agree with Carlson, stating that "the judicial lynching against many of those who participated in the Jan. 6 events, a lynching that is mandating years in pretrial detention and prison for misdemeanors," is part of an broader statist effort "corroding democratic institutions" and bringing the U.S. "closer towards tyranny."

Carlson suggested that the false narrative constructed around Jan. 6 and the corresponding redefinition of terrorism have excused a weaponization of the FBI, the CIA, and other government agencies against the political opponents of the Washington establishment.

"Our own government has been harnessed as a political tool. It's like the one thing you can't allow," said Carlson.

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Washington Post admits years later that Russian trolls 'had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior'



The Washington Post, whose journalists were awarded for peddling the discredited "Russia Hoax" narrative, has admitted that so-called Russian trolls "had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior" ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

What prompted the Post to call into question the central tenet of the narrative advanced by liberal media outlets for years was a study led by the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics.

The study

A study published on Jan. 9 in the journal Nature Communications concluded that "it would appear unlikely that the Russian foreign influence campaign on Twitter could have had much more than a relatively minor influence on individual-level attitudes and voting behavior."

According to the study, it is unlikely that a handful of so-called Russian trolls exerted significant influence for these four reasons:

  • "exposure to posts from Russian foreign influence accounts was concentrated among a small group of users, with only 1% of users accounting for 70% of all exposures";
  • "exposure to Russian foreign influence tweets was overshadowed by the amount of exposure to traditional news media and US political candidates";
  • "respondents with the highest levels of exposure to posts from Russian foreign influence accounts were those arguably least likely to need influencing: those who identified themselves as highly partisan Republicans, who were already likely favorable to Donald Trump"; and
  • no "meaningful relationships between exposure to posts from Russian foreign influence accounts and changes in respondents’ attitudes on the issues, political polarization, or voting behavior" could be found.
In short: Few people saw the trolls' posts; those who saw them didn't need further convincing; the mainstream media's narrative and candidates' agitprop was far more pervasive; and it doesn't seem the trolling ultimately had any meaningful effect.

The thrust of the report is well captured by this one conclusion: "The relationship between the number of posts from Russian foreign influence accounts that users are exposed to and voting for Donald Trump is near zero (and not statistically significant)."

Josh Tucker, co-director of the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics and one of the study's authors, told the Washington Post that the Russian interference narrative "got way overhyped."

"Now we’re looking back at data and we can see how concentrated this was in one small portion of the population, and how the fact that people who were being exposed to these were really, really likely to vote for Trump," said Tucker, adding that "we can’t find any relationship between being exposed to these tweets and people’s change in attitudes."

Despite the study and Tucker's suggestion, the Washington Post appeared keen to salvage credibility, suggesting that the "study doesn't go so far as to say that Russia had no influence on people who voted for President Donald Trump."

The Post contended that the study examined neither possible influence campaigns on Facebook nor the impact of alleged Russian hack-and-leak operations, although there has been suggestion elsewhere that these findings may be generally applicable.

While Russian trolls were evidently ineffective, special counsel Robert Mueller indicated that they nevertheless "had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election."

According to Mueller's indictment against the Internet Research Agency and various foreign nationals, filed Feb. 16, 2018, "Defendants posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, [trolls'] operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump ('Trump Campaign') and disparaging Hillary Clinton."

A falsehood widely circulated

The notion that Russian trolls may have had a significant impact on the 2016 presidential election was pushed by a variety of mainstream liberal news publications.

Here is a short list of examples of articles that appear to exaggerate the impact and threat of Russian trolls:

  • ABC News: "How Russia Used Trolls, Cyberattacks and Propaganda to Try to Influence Election" — Jan. 6, 2017;
  • CBS News: "How Russia-linked groups used Facebook to meddle in 2016 election" — Sept. 13, 2017;
  • BBC: "Russian trolls' chief target was 'black US voters' in 2016" — Oct. 9, 2019;
  • Buzzfeed: "How Russia’s Online Trolls Engaged Unsuspecting American Voters — And Sometimes Duped The Media" — Oct. 25, 2018;
  • Huffington Post: "Russian Trolls Used This One Weird Trick To Infiltrate Our Democracy. You’ll Never Believe Where They Learned It" — Feb. 28, 2018;
  • NBC News: "Russian Twitter trolls stoked voter fraud fear before election" — Nov. 14, 2017;
  • NBC News: "'Information warfare': How Russians interfered in 2016 election" — Feb. 16, 2018;
  • NBC News: "Russian trolls went on attack during key election moments" — Dec. 20, 2017;
  • Newsweek: "How Russian Trolls Targeted the 2016 Election With Lies," retitled "Why Clinton Lost: What Russia Did to Control the American Mind and Put Trump in the White House" — Nov. 18, 2017;
  • NPR: "How A Russian Troll Factory Waged An Aggressive Campaign To Disrupt The U.S. Election" — Feb. 22, 2018;
  • New Yorker: "How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump" — Sept. 24, 2018;
  • New York Times: "Yes, Russian Trolls Helped Elect Trump" — Dec. 17, 2018;
  • New York Times: "The Plot to Subvert an Election" — Sept. 20, 2018;
  • New York Times: "The Propaganda Tools Used by Russians to Influence the 2016 Election" — Feb. 16, 2018;
  • Washington Post: "Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say" — Nov. 24, 2016; and
  • Washington Post: "Timeline: How Russian trolls allegedly tried to throw the 2016 election to Trump" — Feb. 16, 2018.

Democrats and their allies parroted this claim. For instance, failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said that Russian meddling in the 2016 election was an "act of aggression" that proved a "more effective theft even than Watergate."

Clinton told Recode in 2017, "Through content farms, through an enormous investment in falsehoods, fake news, call it what you will — lies — the other side was using content that was just flat-out false and delivering it both above and below the radar screen."

This supposed campaign was "connected, as we now know, to a thousand Russian agents [and] connected to the bots, which are just out of control," said Clinton, adding that "Russians ran an extensive information war campaign against my campaign to influence voters in the election."

The head of PropOrNot, a site that claims to expose Russian propaganda, told the Washington Post anonymously in 2016 that the "way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy. ... It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign. . . . It worked."

The success of this narrative in insinuating Russian support for Trump, thereby buttressing now-discredited claims that members of the Trump administration colluded with Russia, apparently warranted its continued use ahead of the 2020 election.

CNN Business ran an article entitled, "Facebook: Russian trolls are back. And they’re here to meddle with 2020," on Oct. 22, 2019.

The article alleged that "the Russian trolls who used social media to interfere in the 2016 election employed a similar tactic, going after Hillary Clinton from the right and also trying to spread a perception on the left that Clinton was not liberal enough and that liberals and African Americans especially shouldn’t bother voting for her."

In a similar vein, the New York Times published a piece on Jan. 10, 2020, entitled "Chaos Is the Point’: Russian Hackers and Trolls Grow Stealthier in 2020," hyping National Security Agency and foreign claims that the "Russians were back and growing stealthier" and "millions of Americans are still primed to swallow fake news."

Rich Lowry, writing in the New York Post, suggested that this "fevered notion fueled Democratic 2016 election denialism; catalyzed a federal investigation into Trump that was senseless and disruptive; created a cottage industry of supposed disinformation experts; pushed social-media companies into exercising rank political censorship in the name of fact-based content moderation; led to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story; and distorted the work of the FBI."

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Jon Stewart rebukes media for portraying Donald Trump as 'incredible supervillain': 'It's a mistake'



Comedian Jon Stewart provided CNN host Jake Tapper with a dose of reality Sunday, refuting the idea that former President Donald Trump is "some incredible supervillain" who could totally upend American democracy.

What are the details?

Toward the beginning of the interview, Stewart communicated his sense of optimism about the state of America. But Tapper regurgitated trite stereotypes of Trump voters who believe Trump won the 2020 election.

"This is not only not going away, this misinformation, big lie, flirtation with autocracy. It's getting worse," Tapper said.

"That's the worst bedtime story I have ever heard, ever," Stewart shot back.

Completely missing Stewart's point, Tapper continued to blame Trump for current state of American politics. Tapper even suggested that Trump is continuing to identify the "weak points in the guardrails of democracy" by endorsing political candidates who affirm the "big lie." The phrase "big lie" refers to a Nazi propaganda technique that helped facilitate the Holocaust. Democrats and media members, however, have applied the phrase to Trump's insistence that he won the 2020 election.

Focusing on Trump is a bad idea, Stewart responded. Instead, Stewart said the real threat to American democracy is "the idea that power is its own reward" and granting "amnesty to people that are doing things that we would prefer, even if that means that they're slightly undemocratic."

"I think we make a mistake focusing this all on Donald Trump, as though he's, I don't know, Magneto, and some incredible supervillain that has changed the very nature and temperature of the United States," Stewart said.

"Like, he's just been an effective vessel. But, again, like, he's not singing new songs," he continued. "I think it's a mistake to focus it all on this one individual, and not to focus it more on the idea that power is its own reward, whether it be in the financial industry or in government. Like, power doesn't cede itself."

Stewart added, "I don't know that autocracy is purely the domain of Donald Trump. I think that we all have a bit of a tendency to grant amnesty to people that are doing things that we would prefer, even if that means that they're slightly undemocratic."

Jon Stewart: Trump isn't some incredible supervillain www.youtube.com

Regarding President Joe Biden, Stewart said he doesn't think Biden — or anyone in a position of national leadership, for that matter — is leading in a manner the current moment demands.

Terry McAuliffe Championed Stolen Election Conspiracy Theory for Years

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe spent years accusing Republicans and the Supreme Court of stealing the 2000 election—behavior he now says makes "our democracy look bad around the globe."

The post Terry McAuliffe Championed Stolen Election Conspiracy Theory for Years appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Insane USA Today Editor Says Republicans Who Ousted Cheney Are A Greater Threat Than 9/11 Hijackers

USA Today Editor David Mastio wrote an op-ed Thursday claiming Republicans who voted to remove Liz Cheney from leadership were greater threat than terrorists.