MSNBC’s Brian Williams on Monday night showed an ad about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that he and the ad’s creators said Fox News refused to air.
The “11th Hour” host transparently told his viewers that MeidasTouch, which created the ad, is “a liberal political action committee” and “ardently anti-Trump” before pointing to a Sunday tweet from the organization which read, “We made a $184,854 TV buy with this ad on Fox News this week. Fox News just denied airing our ad. Retweet and get it out in every corner of the country.”
The tweet included a video of Capitol police officers discussing the deadly riot from their perspective and Williams rolled that tape, saying, “Well, we have a pretty good reach, too, so we’ve chosen to air it tonight. While you watch, ask yourself, ‘What isn’t factual about it? Which people in it aren’t real?’ It’s about the attempt to overturn our election — the insurrection of 1/6 — and the story is told by those in the fight.”
The clip included testimony and interviews from responding officers who described how supporters of former president Donald Trump engaged in “the most brutal, savage hand-to-hand combat” and swung weapons, used chemical sprays on officers and called the respondents “traitors” for fighting back.
MeidasTouch is certainly getting a bang for its lack of buck on this one: The organization has tweeted about Fox News being “scared” to run the clip at least a dozen times since Sunday and launched a fundraising campaign based on the denial. Prior to this, the organization has frequently targeted Fox News with other unfavorable ads and tweets. In his Sunday night newsletter this weekend, CNN’s Brian Stelter weighed in, writing, “But let’s be honest – this seems like a bid for attention. Fox is within its rights to object to the messenger behind the ad, not the message.”
A Fox News spokesperson confirmed to TheWrap this wasn’t the first ad the network declined from the PAC.
Watch Williams play the ad below, via MSNBC.