Tucker Carlson on His January 6th Documentary

CLAY: Tucker, let me make sure I get this right. You have got a brand-new, three-part documentary that is already driving people on the left wing of this country — the Blue Checkmark Brigade, as I call them — absolutely insane. It’s called Patriot Purge. It’s gonna be on Fox Nation about what really happened on January 6th, and how it’s been used to start a domestic War on Terror. Tucker, are you surprised how angry you’ve already got the Blue Checkmark Brigade before they’ve even seen a minute of this documentary?

CARLSON: Well, I suppose I am. I’m fascinated by it. I’m not really bothered or threatened by it. The documentary — which people can assess for themselves — is factual. We did dozens and dozens of interviews, went through hundreds and hundreds of hours of relevant tape. It’s, I think, meticulously reported and really interesting.

But before it even came out on the basis of our trailer, the Washington Post ran yesterday a 10,000-word rebuttal, which is a (crosstalk) word to describe it — on the basis of a minute and 20 seconds? What does that tell you? It’s not about me, obviously, or even about Fox News. It’s about the fact that they believe they have a monopoly on the way that you understand this event.

Now, why is that so important to that? They’re not bothered when the suicide rate doubles or a hundred thousand Americans drop dead from drug ODs. They don’t even pause. So it’s not a question of hurting America. America’s being hurt and they’re not noticing. It’s a question of taking away their control. Now, why would [January] 6th, this riot at the Capitol which, by the way, I disapproved of it when it happened; I disapprove of it now.

Why is it so essential for them to tell us that it’s an insurrection run by racists? Because on that pretext they’re cracking down on their political opponents. I mean, that’s obviously the whole point of this and we prove it in the documentary, but it’s all around us. There are people sitting in solitary for this date for trespassing.

So, at the same time that some guy lights up a school with a handgun, shoots two people in class in Fort Worth and does a night in jail; so, like, the punishments are so disproportionate that it tells you, of course, this is all political. And we should push back against that. Equal justice is the main thing we have. We shouldn’t give up on it.

BUCK: Hey, Tucker, it’s Buck, and I’m just wondering, what is it…?

CARLSON: Hey!

BUCK: Yeah, thanks. Thanks for being with us. What is it that you can give as a sense…? I know I want people to go watch this, right? So I don’t want you to give away too much in advance. We know how that goes. It’s important that people see this, though. We talk a lot about the insurrection narrative. I have said and this is coming from an ex-CIA call anyone who calls this an insurrection is an idiot or a liar.

I don’t think there’s a third option. There was in way which was going to overthrow the United States government. What are some of the things that identify in the documentary, in Patriot Purge, that may be new to people or that may be necessary for them to know to have the full context for what I also have said is a riot, was bad, but wasn’t what they’re telling you it is?

CARLSON: No. So there are three parts to it. Tonight’s the first, and we lay out the facts of the day. What actually happened? I don’t think there’s been a public event videotape from more angles than this one. So there’s a lot of available evidence. We don’t have to speculate. What’s so striking to me is that the basic facts, the core facts, the easily discoverable facts have been totally distorted from the beginning.

Let’s just start with the most obvious. How many people died? So, “Five people died! Six people died! They were killed by the mob,” and the truth is completely different from that. No one was killed by the mob. One person — one person — was killed. She was an unarmed Trump supporter. She was five-two and her name was Ashli Babbitt, famously, and she was shot by a Capitol Police officer with a history of recklessness.

We can debate if that was justified or not. I don’t think there’s any way that it was but others disagree. But what we can’t debate is that five or six people died cause that’s not what happened. Officer Sicknick was not beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. That’s a lie, and yet that lie — which ran in the New York Times — was uncorrected for weeks defined the coverage, and it’s still being repeated.

Who first breached the line of police officers? Another question. How many police officers stepped out of the way to allow the crowd to go in? It’s all on videotape. Who are the people there? So just kind of setting the fact pattern down — this is what actually happened; this is what knowable — was shocking to me once.

After three or four months you worked in this, which was all written down here which like this literally bears no resemblance to what they’ve been telling me every single day on television for 10 months. The second… I won’t go too into it too much. What has this been used for not lying, they feel like they’re lying getting something out of and it this has been used to justify the biggest crackdown on civil liberties in American history or certainly since First World War, since the Wilson administration.

And the third question that we ask, which is an entirely valid question, is, “How many people in the crowd that day had contact with federal law enforcement?” And there’s no question that some did. That’s kind of beyond dispute. They’ve admitted it. But a number of people who seemed to be at the center of encouraging the crowd — the people encouraging the crowd to breach the police line — have not been indicted.

Whereas grandmothers — who did effectively nothing but walk down the hallway — are still in jail. So what does that tell you? It tells you they’re most likely federal informants. So what is that? What’s the outline of that? Why can’t we know? What’s the answer?

CLAY: This is such a fascinating thing that you’re examining, because it’s the very foundation of what journalists used to do, right? Ask questions, analyze evidence, examine it, put forward hypotheses which can be rejected or accepted by the larger media ecosystem in what we would call the marketplace of ideas. Yet you are being attacked, which you are used to. And, by the way, Buck and I are used to being attacked, too. Savagely, I would say, though, Tucker over this, in a way that doesn’t happen for all of our opinions, which to me is so fascinating about it.

CARLSON: Exactly.

CLAY: Like you just said, the Washington Post wrote 10,000 words about a one-minute-22 advertisement that you guys put out. There’s an entire cottage industry that has mobilized here, and Buck and I have been talking about this, and I find it so fascinating. In an era where we say, “Hey, it’s wrong to punish anyone,” right? There’s all these people that get back out on the streets when they’re convicted of serious crimes.

We have people still in solitary confinement for January 6th, and it’s as if those people don’t exist. They’ve been disappeared, which is what happens in so many countries that don’t have basic First Amendment rights. Shouldn’t way more people such as GOP reps be asking the question about this, yeah?

CARLSON: Well, sure. What this has been used to do is redefine democratic opposition — small D democratic opposition — to their rule as terrorism, to redefine their domestic political opponents as terrorists. And once you do that, then you can focus the full weight and force of the national security state on these people, and as we I think demonstrate at great length, that is in fact happened. Why is no one saying anything about it?

Because their aggression is so overwhelming that you really have to decide, “Well, I’m gonna all of a sudden not go to the grocery store again this year if I say this.” There’s a penalty for saying it. I’m just, you know, at a certain age and place in my life I don’t care, but there’s a lot of members of Congress who I think kind of know what’s going on but it’s not worth getting involved in it because the penalty is just too high.

It’s basically just the same as the BLM riot and the same as covid. They’re so aggressive that people feel like it’s just not even worth participating, and I think that’s a shame. I think people should show a little bit more bravery in the face of authoritarianism. But I’m not in charge people, only myself. But, yeah, they don’t want to deal with it like next thing you know you’re Marjorie Taylor Greene and, like, people are calling you a Nazi for saying things that were totally conventional five years ago. It’s a rare person who’s willing to deal with that. It’s just not worth it.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Tucker Carlson. You all know him from Fox News from his 8 p.m. Eastern show. He’s got a documentary coming out, three-part series, Patriot Purge, on Fox Nation which you should all check out. Tucker, we’re talking around this and to this in different ways. GOP cowardice on this issue.

I still feel as though there has been no real accountability when there’s all these numbers and it’s such an easy case to make for defund the police, for the riots that even racked my own neighborhood here in New York City. There were broken windows and glass all over the streets when I went out in the morning after the purge night here, so to speak.

The GOP hasn’t made an effective case in my mind about how damaging, destructive that was. And now we have people still held in solitary, and I think we’re setting ourselves up here for a year where everything’s going against the Biden administration that is based on policy and decision-making.

We’re seeing horrific results. You’re dealing with that night in and night out on the show. But they’re just gonna run in the, “Well, if you’re a Republican you’re an insurrectionist” playbook, and I worry that because the opposition is cowardly to that, that we may actually suffer or at least not do as well as we should when the people have seen that the Democrats just don’t know what the heck they’re doing.

CARLSON: Well, sure, or they do. If you’re shutting down domestic energy production at a time when the country is getting poorer then at some point it’s like it’s not just ideological; it’s an attempt to destroy the country. That’s the conclusion I’m reaching. The question… So there’s no doubt — and I think you’re gonna see this in Virginia tomorrow — that people think Democrats don’t know what they’re doing or they’re actively harming our institutions.

The question is, “Are the Republicans worth voting for?” and unfortunately the answer is no. They’re loathsome. You really think Mitch McConnell would care if you got pulled off the street tomorrow for your political opinions and thrown in jail? You think he’d say a word? No, of course not. And, by the way, I hate to say it, but there’s been a huge amount of money raised around the former president.

How much of that has gone to legal defense funds of people rotting in D.C. jails? Zero. So where are the Republican…? I’m sorry. It’s just true. Where are the Republican leaders standing up for their people, their voters? They’re nowhere. There are a few of them. And then you have Lindsey Graham, we learned in the Washington Post yesterday — as these people are milling about the hallways in the Capitol — telling the Capitol Police to shoot them to death. Shoot them! American citizens, unarmed, shoot them. “That’s why we give you guns,” he said. It’s like, really? How is Lindsey Graham on TV pretending to be conservative —

BUCK: That’s appalling. That’s appalling.

CARLSON: — when he’s telling the police to shoot unarmed American citizens? What the hell! I don’t know. It’s too frustrating, honestly.

CLAY: Tucker, speaking of frustrating, the “Let’s go, Brandon” chant is an antidote for many people’s frustrations. I was down at the Florida-Georgia game. Banner on an airplane flying over the stadium. Same thing happened last night for the Atlanta Braves game that was going up against the Astros. The Southwest Airlines’ basically investigation that’s being driven by the Blue Checkmark Brigade. I’m curious your thoughts on this.

You had for six years basically these people have been saying, “Hey, Colin Kaepernick in uniform at work, it’s incredibly brave for him to take a political stand. A Southwest Airlines pilot, who may or may not have said this, by the way. There’s talk that he may have said “Let’s go, Braves” instead of “Let’s go, Brandon” because of the World Series.

CARLSON: Yes.

CLAY: But what about the irony here of claiming to be a First Amendment supporter yet immediately requiring this guy be doxed, identified, and never able to work again after years and years of defending what I think, frankly, is the loathsome perspective of Colin Kaepernick because he’s a hypocrite and a liar? It’s amazing, isn’t it?

CARLSON: Well, I think they’ve pretty much given up on supporting the First Amendment. We’ve had people in the last 25 years — people of authority — saying I should be in jail for running this trailer and it’s not protected speech. They’re not for civil liberties, period. They’re not for your First or Second Amendments, which are the pivotal ones, or third or fourth, for that matter.

But what’s so striking to me, again, is the hysteria, the neuroses, the kind of personal craziness that this grows out of. People like this have this politics not because they’ve been led here by some logic claim — you know, they feel like this is gonna make things better — but because whatever profound personal torment they’re living through, they’re hysteria people, they’ll say anything.

Like someone tells a joke they don’t like and all of a sudden, they accuse the pilot of wanting to fly the plane into the ground. It’s so crazy and disproportionate, and yet the whole country is held hostage to their hysteria. And at some point, it’s like having a teenage child who’s out of control.

It’s sad, but you can’t let this kid control your family. You still have it sit down for dinner and if they can’t handle it, “Go to your room!” Like, when do the rest of us stop paying attention to hysteria, neurotic blue checks telling us what to think? I mean, I’ve already reached that point. I hope others do.

BUCK: Yeah, we’re hoping it’s when they stop wearing masks outside, Tucker, dismissing that masking up between bites on the airplane is somehow scientific.

CARLSON: (laughing)

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: But, look, folks, you gotta go check this out if for no other reason than it will really upset Rep. Liz Cheney.

CARLSON: Of course.

BUCK: So go check it out. TuckerCarlson.com and you can get the full access to Fox Nation for free for 90 days. I’m gonna be watching this three-part doc. I know Clay is too. TuckerCarlson.com. Get full access to Fox Nation for 90 days. Tucker, great work, man. We always appreciate you, and thanks for coming here to hang out with us.

CARLSON: You guys are the best. Thank you.