We watch twenty staff members fleeing House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's office and then, as we see a mob fighting to break through a line of uniformed Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police officers battling to keep them back, we hear the frantic cry (in the headline above) from an officer, just after his appeals for help have gone unanswered: "We're trying to hold the upper deck. We're trying to hold the upper deck now. We're trying to hold the doors of the Capitol. I need support!"
Republican viewers did not see the January 6 committee's eleven-minute compilation of the attack on the Capitol on Fox News Channel. No Republican member of the House or the Senate can expect to be asked to watch with the TV audience anything resembling representative footage from the committee's video followed by a request for comment on what we have seen with our own eyes.
Police officers were brutally assaulted by an angry, violent mob that engaged in hand to hand combat with officers for hours, eventually breached the line, smashed through windows and doors, and finally entered the Capitol. Plausible deniability requires not looking squarely at what's plain to see. Fox News Channel, in concert with the MAGA establishment of the Republican Party, is dedicated to not looking.
Fox News viewers tuning into Tucker Carlson Tonight as the January 6 committee held its first hearing heard the host tut-tut "the ruling class," pronounce the January 6 riot as a "forgettably minor outbreak" of violence and the committee as offering "another extended prime time harangue," rather than covering real news: the rise in gas prices, increase in drug overdoses, an economy heading for recession -- "and scariest, and least noted of all, this country has never in its history been closer to a nuclear war." All this and more in the first sixty seconds of the show. [Editor's note: Fox has removed the YouTube video of Carlson's June 9 program that I relied on to offer the description in this paragraph.]
Philip Bump, in comments on the broadcast (which includes reviewing Carlson's fraudulent insinuation of a debunked conspiracy theory that the riot was a "false flag" operation) notes that Fox was determined not to reveal any substantive information from the committee -- even muted visuals that might inform:
For much of the show, the hearing was shown on-screen as Carlson and his guests spoke over it. Often, the view was not of the committee members, witnesses or the video display at the front of the hearing room. Instead it was often a shot of the audience. . . . During footage showing rioters breaking into the Capitol, Fox switched to the camera showing the audience. When the hearing showed information that didn’t need sound, Fox more than once cut away from it.
Bump summed up the counter-programming: "It hyped doubt about the election results, promoted debunked conspiracy theories and ironically cast the committee’s work as lies and propaganda."
The Fox News faithful tuned into Carlson never saw the video documentation of the violent battle that took place on January 6, 2021. They never heard the first-hand testimony of the police officer injured in the attack or of the documentary filmmaker following the Proud Boys that day. And they didn't hear the remarks of the committee's vice chair:
On the morning of January 6th, President Donald Trump’s intention was to remain President of the United States despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his Constitutional obligation to relinquish power. Over multiple months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power. In our hearings, you will see evidence of each element of this plan. -- From the opening remarks of Representative Liz Cheney
Although the attack on the Capitol was number six of the seven-part plan, it's a critical link. Any Americans determined not to believe their own eyes, with hours and hours of video evidence from multiple sources (including the rioters themselves) of the prolonged attack, are not likely to accept plain evidence of the plan to subvert the election that Trump lost.
If viewers watched Tucker Carlson Tonight last Thursday night, there are still many opportunities to see what actually happened. Fox News Channel does its best to keep folks in the bubble, but diehard FNC fans who avert their eyes from the reality of the January 6 assault on the Capitol appear to be willfully remaining in the dark.
Americans who deny part six of Trump's plan are probably unreachable. The hearings are for folks less dug into the fictive illusions of the Republican Party circa 2022.