CNN’s Jake Tapper slammed Fox News on Tuesday after the conservative network aired select clips from about 40,000 hours of Capitol security footage during the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
“Fox used the footage given to them exclusively by House speaker Kevin McCarthy to frame a description of the events of Jan. 6 where they say very little was organized and very little was violent, where the phrase, in their view, ‘deadly insurrection’ was a lie,” Tapper said. “All of this alternate theory of what happened that day contradicts law enforcement, contradicts people who were there that day, contradicts Capitol police officers, contradicts bipartisan members of the Jan. 6 committee and contradicts Congressional Republicans.”
During the segment, Tapper played several montages in which notable Republican lawmakers like Chip Roy and Lindsey Graham, former vice president Mike Pence and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell all denounced the violence on Jan. 6. CNN reporter Manu Raju also said he spoke with Republican lawmakers who disagreed with Fox’s “whitewashing” of the events that unfolded on Jan. 6, including Sen. Thom Thillis, Sen. Kevin Cramer, Sen. John Thune and Sen. Mike Rounds.
According to Tapper, CNN and other organizations like ABC, CBS and USA Today owner Gannett have requested the footage Fox exclusively received, but Speaker McCarthy’s office has not yet given access, noting they’re “still working on it.”
Tapper also emphasized that Fox’s release of the footage comes as they are being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for lying about the company and claiming the results of the 2020 election were stolen. Fox’s owner Rupert Murdoch recently admitted in a deposition that some of the network’s hosts endorsed those lies on air.
Additionally, Tapper has reached out to McCarthy’s office to ask what he thinks about Fox’s release of the footage.
“I reached out to Speaker McCarthy and asked four simple questions: Does the Speaker of the House agree with Fox’s conclusion that everything about the phrase ‘deadly insurrection’ is a lie? Does the Speaker of the House agree that very little about Jan. 6 was organized and violent? Does the Speaker of the House agree that members of the Jan. 6 Select House Committee lied about what was on the security footage? And does the Speaker of the House agree that ‘the 2020 election was a grave betrayal of Democracy?,’” Tapper said. “So far, Speaker McCarthy has not responded. One does wonder how much facts matter to him.”
Watch the full segment in the video above.
