Speaker McCarthy faces backlash, says he has ‘no regrets’ over sharing January 6 footage with Tucker Carlson

House of the Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said he has no regrets about releasing over 40,000 hours of footage from January 6 to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.  McCarthy said the tapes were released to provide transparency to the American people.

“No,” McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday when asked if he regretted granting Carlson access. “I said at the very beginning, transparency. And so what I wanted to produce for everybody is exactly what I said. The people could actually look at it and see what’s gone on that day.”

McCarthy was also asked about Carlson’s comments where he said that January 6 was “mostly peaceful chaos.”

McCarthy responded, “I don’t know what Tucker Carlson said.” When pressed on if he believed the day was an insurrection, McCarthy returned to the matter of transparency.

“I continue to hold that my job here, just like I was asked long before, is to make sure all the transparency comes out. And that’s exactly what I’m doing,” McCarthy said. “And just like all of you cover news, people who are able to interpret the way they want. But I think the fairest way to do it instead of trying to clip it into something else, allow all the transparency so everybody can see so Jan. 6 never happens again.”

Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger hit out at Carlson by saying that his show was full of “offensive and misleading conclusions about the Jan. 6 attack.”

“The program conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video. The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments,” he wrote in the memo, later adding, “Those of you who contributed to the effort to allow this country’s legislative process to continue know firsthand what actually happened.”

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) held up a copy of Manger’s statement and told the media that he wanted to “associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief of the Capitol police about what happened on Jan. 6.” He said his “concern is how it was depicted.”

“It was a mistake, in my view, [for] Fox News to depict this in a way completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol” described, McConnell went onto say.

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UH) directly lashed out at McCarthy for giving Fox exclusive access to the footage. 

‘If you’re gonna give footage, give it to all the networks, not just one,’ the Utah Republican told reporters. ‘Placating the base of my party is not the right way forward for the Republican Party or for the country.’ 

He also took aim at Tucker Carlson by saying ‘It’s really sad to see Tucker Carlson go off the rails…it’s so absurd.’