The Tucker Carlson January 6th footage stunt takes an ugly turn for Kevin McCarthy
It’s not clear Kevin McCarthy thought it was a good idea to give January 6th security footage to Fox News host Tucker Carlson. McCarthy knows that Carlson is a career liar who was going to present the footage in dishonest fashion. And while that might end up being good for Carlson’s TV ratings, how was McCarthy supposed to have benefited from this? After all, villainy for villainy’s sake is not how villains get ahead. All it does is expose them to unnecessary risk.
We’re now seeing that play out in the form of widespread backlash against the stunt. What McCarthy apparently didn’t count on is that by giving this footage solely to a Fox News host, he screwed over every other major news outlet. They appear to be taking this personally, and they’ve decided not to let this story go.
The media’s ongoing attention to this stunt has forced the issue to the point that McCarthy’s Republican counterpart in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, publicly criticized Carlson for it yesterday. And of course by extension, McConnell is also calling out McCarthy for giving Carlson the footage.
McConnell deservers zero points for this. He’s not someone who ever views his decision making through a lens of what’s right or wrong, but rather merely does whatever he thinks is personally best for himself and his own career prospects. He sees that the media is not going to let this scandal go, and that it’s going to keep getting uglier for McCarthy and Carlson. So McConnell is speaking out against the stunt in order to make sure it doesn’t land in his lap.
Given that Mitch McConnell is the kind of savvy villain who’s managed to navigate these kinds of situations successfully enough to survive for decades, and he’s making a point of distancing himself from this stunt, it gives you an idea of how ugly this could get for Kevin McCarthy.
We’ll see how this ends up playing out for Tucker Carlson. For the moment he has a fictional “exclusive” story that he gets to play up to his deranged right wing audience. Maybe this will end up blowing back on him and Fox News or maybe it won’t. But it’s already clear that Kevin McCarthy is getting nothing out of this stunt but headaches. So why did he even go along with it?
We’d guess Carlson talked McCarthy into it, and convinced him that it would go well for both of them. If so, then Carlson played McCarthy for a fool. Carlson had to know that the entire mainstream media would take it personally that McCarthy not only gave the footage to a crook, but snubbed all of them in the name of giving it to a crook – and McCarthy didn’t even see it coming. But then that’s the danger of being as dumb, clueless, and powerless as Kevin McCarthy. Even your own “friends” are just going to use you for their gain at your expense.
