Fox's Tucker Carlson was very upset over the news that InfoWars host Owen Shroyer was arrested for his involvement in the January 6th MAGA sedition riot at the Capitol.
August 21, 2021

This isn't the first time Fox "news" propagandist Tucker Carlson has accused the FBI of running a false flag operation on January 6th, claiming that the MAGA sedition riot was actually organized by the FBI, rather than Trump and his allies.

As Media Matters reported, Carlson was pushing this bizarre conspiracy theory back in June in an attempt to exonerate those who were actually responsible for attempting to overthrow our democracy and to make a martyr out of Ashley Babbitt as well:

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): We know that the government is hiding the identity of many law enforcement officers present at the Capitol on January 6, not just the ones that killed Ashley Babbitt. According to the government's own court filings, those law enforcement officers participated in the riot, sometimes in violent ways. We know that because without fail, the government has thrown the book at most people who were present in the Capitol on January 6. There was a nationwide dragnet to find them. Many of them are still in solitary confinement tonight.

But strangely, some of the key people who participated on January 6 have not been charged. Look at the documents; the government calls those people unindicted co-conspirators. What does that mean? Well, it means that in potentially every single case they were FBI operatives. Really? In the Capitol on January 6?

We can now thank Reuters, and some thinly sourced so-called "reporting" they did this Friday for giving Carlson an excuse to repeat the same dangerous nonsense on his show that evening, as a lead in to him railing about the arrest of InfoWars host Owen Shroyer.

The Reuters article cited "four current and former law enforcement officials" and made the highly erroneous claim that the FBI "found scant evidence that the U.S. Capitol attack was coordinated," and specifically named Alex Jones and Roger Stone, just before we find out that there was an arrest warrant issued for Shroyer.

Here's Carlson's rant defending Shroyer:

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Just today, the DOJ, the Biden administration announced it's charging a host at Infowars, a man called Owen Shroyer, with several federal crimes, including "entering a restricted area on January 6th." Well, that sounds bad. What did Owen Shroyer do? He didn't go inside the Capitol building on January 6th. He stood on the Capitol steps with hundreds of other people. He didn't even loot Macy's. Like Black Lives Matter. He just stood there on the Capitol steps, a building he thought he owned as an American citizen.

What's going on here exactly? Well, Owen Shroyer's real crime appeared to have occurred in December of 2019 when he shouted mean things to Jerry Nadler during a congressional hearing. The DOJ accused him of disorderly conduct and told him, "Never go near the Capitol again. You don't want to hurt Jerry Nadler's feelings." He disobeyed. Now, he's going to jail on Monday.

Are you cool with this, Dick Cheney's daughter? Is that all right with you? Is this the country you want to live in? How about that, Adam Kinzinger? Is this the "democracy" you fought for? Please. So the ringleaders of the riots go free, especially if they're working for the FBI, but the people who offend Joe Biden's friends, they're in jail.

I don't think either of them are too worried about Carlson's rant or that sloppy excuse for reporting from Reuters as their committee continues to do their own investigations into what happened that day. That article at Reuters looks like it was sourced from someone trying to do damage control for Trump, Alex Jones and Roger Stone, and they wound up with egg on their face less than a day later with this arrest.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon