Tucker Carlson launches dishonest and passionate defense of Capitol insurrectionists
Carlson: “They didn't have guns, but a lot of them had extremely dangerous ideas. They talked about the Constitution, and something called their rights”
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From the April 6, 2020, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Today is the three month anniversary of January 6th. For those of you are not good at dates or don't have calendars, this is the day that we pause to remember the white supremacist QAnon insurrection, that came so very close to toppling our government and ending this democracy forever.
You saw what happened. It was carried live on television, every gruesome moment. A mob of older people from unfashionable zip codes somehow made it all the way to Washington, D.C., probably by bus.
They wandered freely through the Capitol, like it was their building or something. They didn't have guns, but a lot of them had extremely dangerous ideas. They talked about the Constitution, and something called their rights. Some of them made openly seditious claims. They insisted, for example, that the last election wasn't entirely fair. The whole thing was terrifying, and then, as you've been told so very often, they committed unspeakable acts of violence.
By the time thousands of soldiers arrived to restore order, an unarmed woman, an Air Force veteran lay dead. To this day, that woman is the one completely verified casualty of the insurrection, the only person whose death we can say definitively was caused by specific events on January 6th. We know how she died. The funny thing is, you almost never hear that woman's name. Possibly that's because she was not a Democratic member of congress or even a Joe Biden voter. She was a protester, her name was Ashli Babbitt. She was 35.
We still don't know who shot Ashli Babbitt or why -- no one will tell us.
But then, when you're fighting insurrectionists, you don't have to explain yourself. You just hyperventilate about QAnon and then you do whatever you want.
When a group of sad disenfranchised people who have been left out of the modern economy show up at your office, you don't have to listen to their complaints. Not for a second. Why would you? You thought listening to people's complaints was democracy? No, these people threaten democracy.
You could even shoot one of them if you want, and get away with it. Killing people without explaining yourself is an established part of counterinsurgency.