CNN’s Don Lemon had another on-air fit Tuesday morning after Fox News aired new footage of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot that undermined the media’s narrative of a “deadly insurrection.” Lemon, whose public image is still recovering after he declared last month that women over 40 are past their “prime,” complained that Fox News was given a scoop instead of CNN.
On Monday’s edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox News aired new surveillance footage of the Capitol released to the network by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The tapes exposed the remarkable deception of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Select Committee on Jan. 6, which featured manipulated audio and video footage to dramatize the riot for Democrats’ show-trial hearings. Carlson’s reporting showed the select committee misrepresented GOP Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s evacuation from the Capitol and concealed evidence that Ray Epps, the mysterious protester who encouraged demonstrators to storm congressional chambers, lied about his whereabouts.
Carlson’s journalism, Lemon fumed on Tuesday, revealed the “danger of not fairness, unfairness.” McCarthy should have given the footage “to every news organization at the same time so that they’re able to, as you say, analyze it each in real time,” Lemon said, at the prompting of his co-anchors because he had apparently been “talking about this all morning.”
“Not just all morning,” Lemon told Poppy Harlow.
Lemon’s freakout over Carlson’s access to more than 40,000 hours of Capitol footage comes after CNN enjoyed two years of exclusive reporting from Pelosi’s Select Committee on Jan. 6. CNN was the committee’s go-to outlet for peddling information operations against opponents of the politicized probe.
Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday night, McCarthy fielded a question from CNN’s Manu Raju, who asked, “Do you regret giving [Carlson] this footage so he could whitewash the events of that day?”
“What I wanted to produce for everyone was exactly what I said, so people could look at it and see what [had] gone on that day,” McCarthy said.
The speaker went on to hand Raju a hard copy of an “exclusive” article from CNN that revealed the secret location where lawmakers congregated during the riot.
“CNN Exclusive: New footage shows congressional leadership at Fort McNair on January 6, scrambling to save the US Capitol,” headlined the October report. It featured “Never-before-seen footage, obtained exclusively by CNN,” that “shows in vivid new detail how congressional leaders fled the US Capitol on January 6 and transformed a nearby military base into a command center.”
“I had here where you guys actually broke where we were. This was a secret location, Fort McNair,” McCarthy said. “I don’t know if you got concerned by that. I don’t even know from a point of view of security if we can ever be taken there again.”
Lemon might be offended by how Carlson’s coverage exposed gross misconduct by the Jan. 6 Committee, but the CNN anchor seems even more frustrated that his competitor got the first-look scoop. The childish fit he threw in response after years of his network’s collusion with Pelosi’s Jan. 6 probe is pathetic.
[WATCH: J6 Tapes Part 1, Part 2, Part 3]
