House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), in keeping with a promise made to House Republicans, recently granted Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to more than 40,000 hours of surveillance camera footage from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot of 2021, and Carlson began to air some that never-before-seen footage on Monday.

In response, congressional Democrats, chief among them Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), erupted in panic and outrage at what Carlson had done, Breitbart reported.

In truth, the panic and outrage were largely due to the fact that Carlson, merely by airing small select portions of the previously unseen footage within his one-hour program, managed to debunk and expose multiple false or misleading narratives about the Capitol riot that were carefully crafted and protected over the past two years by Democrats and their allies in the media … as well as the Republican Party.

Schumer slams Carlson

Schumer took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to deliver a scathing and not entirely accurate speech that denounced both Carlson and McCarthy in the worst sort of way and even called upon Fox News executives to intervene to block Carlson from airing any additional footage.

“I and so many others who were here are just furious with Tucker Carson,” Schumer said. “With disregard of the risks and knowing full well he was lying, lying to his audience, Fox News host Tucker Carlson ran a lengthy segment last night, arguing the January 6 Capitol attack was not a violent insurrection.”

“To say January 6 was not violent is a lie, a lie pure and simple,” he continued. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a prime-time cable news anchor manipulate his viewers the way Mr. Carlson did last night. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anchor treat the American people and American democracy with such disdain.”

“And he’s going to come back tonight with another segment. Fox News should tell him not to,” the Senate leader urged. “Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, tell Carlson not to run a second segment of lies. You know it’s a lie, you’ve admitted it’s a lie.

Schumer rips McCarthy

Turning his attention to the leader of the House, Schumer said, “And Speaker McCarthy is every bit as culpable as Mr. Carlson. Speaker McCarthy’s decision to share security footage with Fox looked like a mistake from the very beginning. But after last night, it looks like a disaster.”

“Speaker McCarthy has played a treacherous — treacherous game by catering to the hard right,” he continued and laughably proceeded to accuse the House Speaker of eroding democracy and diminishing the American people’s faith in the integrity of elections — as if that ship didn’t set sail more than two years ago for millions of Americans.

Schumer went on to call McCarthy “shameful” and asserted that this was a “low point” for both the speaker’s career and Fox News. The remainder of his remarks were nothing more than non-sequiturs about the disputed 2020 election results which, while tangentially related, have nothing to do with Carlson airing unseen footage that the prior Democrat-controlled Congress kept hidden away for two years.

‘Speaker McCarthy is every bit as culpable as Mr. Carlson.’

Sen. Chuck Schumer criticized Speaker Kevin McCarthy for ‘catering to the hard right’ after McCarthy granted Fox News’ Tucker Carlson access to Capitol security footage, who then downplayed the violence on Jan 6. pic.twitter.com/kK1YtdQ5M1

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) March 7, 2023

McCarthy says American people can draw their “own conclusion”

For what it is worth, ABC News reported that Speaker McCarthy defended his decision to allow Carlson access to the tens of thousands of hours of unseen footage when peppered with questions from reporters on Tuesday.

“Each person can come up with their own conclusion,” McCarthy said, though he acknowledged that he hadn’t watched what Carlson had aired on Monday night’s program.

As for the loud complaints from Democrats, the media, and even some Republicans about how the footage Carlson showed was “cherry-picked,” “misleading,” and “offensive” — per ABC — those exact same terms can be used to describe how the Democrat-controlled Jan. 6 committee had similarly only released to the public certain select clips of footage that bolstered their pre-set narratives and kept hidden from the people anything that might contradict or debunk their partisan assertions and conclusions.