“Prosecutors on Sunday rejected the notion that newly public footage of Jacob Chansley — known as the QAnon Shaman — accompanied by police in the Capitol undercuts his criminal conduct on Jan. 6, 2021,” Politico reports.

“In their first response since Fox News’ Tucker Carlson aired the footage — supplied to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy — prosecutors indicated that Carlson aired footage only from a four-minute period toward the end of Chansley’s hourlong trip through the Capitol, omitting the most incriminating aspects of his conduct.”

Katie Phang: “I spent almost 25 years as a trial lawyer before I became the host of the Katie Phang Show. Whether it was a criminal or civil case, the facts and the evidence are what mattered the most. And my currency as a trial lawyer? The truth. Sure, as a lawyer, you perfect the art of the spin. But at the end of the day, and no matter how hard you try to make it look nicer or sound better, it’s the truth that will either bring victory or a crushing defeat.”

“In the Dominion versus Fox News defamation case, Fox is now trapped in an ever-worsening spiral of lies of its own creation. Time and time again, Fox allegedly trafficked in lies and falsehoods. And the result just might be a financial death penalty for the network…”

“Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in lost profits and reputational harm. But it’s also seeking punitive damages, which are not capped under New York state law and could also be in the billions of dollars.”

“Soon after the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Fox Corp. explored acquiring rights to The Apprentice, the competition show that Donald Trump hosted on NBC before he became president,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Amanda Carpenter: “McCarthy made an affirmative decision to collaborate with Fox News, even as the company is embroiled in a billion-dollar lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems, which has exposed in granular detail how Fox’s two-faced hosts, executives, and producers brazenly air content they know is untruthful. That makes this not just a Fox problem, but a Republican party problem, too.”

“What McCarthy is doing for power is precisely what Fox does to retain its ratings. Unsure how to navigate in a political environment controlled mainly by former President Donald Trump, they let the most radical elements of the MAGA coalition call the shots. It’s almost as if a “demonic force” came over them all.”

“Bill O’Reilly is really talented, he’s more talented than I am, he’s got a lot more viewers, he’s a better communicator than I am, but I think there is a deep phoniness at the center of his schtick, and again as I say the schtick is built on the perception that he is the character he plays.”

— Tucker Carlson, on C-SPAN in 2003.

Earlier for members: The End of Tucker Carlson?

“Mere hours after Tucker Carlson’s latest segment minimizing the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, House Republicans were eager to change the subject from the Fox News host’s riot revisionism,” Politico reports.

“While Carlson continued to roil Washington, many GOP lawmakers who gathered Wednesday morning were celebrating their unexpected win on a bill rolling back progressive D.C. crime laws and plotting their response to Thursday’s White House budget.”

Dan Pfeiffer: “In some ways, my career in political communications has been defined by the rise of Fox News and the rest of the Right Wing media. For the entirety of the twenty-first century, Fox News has been the most powerful weapon in the Right’s arsenal. From Capitol Hill, the campaign trail, the White House, and now from my perch in progressive media, I watched Fox start wars, beat Democrats into submission, drive reams of mainstream press coverage, and make Donald Trump President.”

“But they have never been more vulnerable. Here’s how Democrats should adjust their approach to Fox News.”

“The idea of Tucker Carlson being in that mob that day and not wetting his pants is hard to imagine.”

— Anderson Cooper, on CNN, criticizing the Fox News host’s attempt to re-write what happened on January 6.

David Graham: “That Tucker Carlson thinks his viewers are stupid is not new, though his first swing at spinning unseen footage of the January 6 insurrection provides a fresh test of just how credulous they are.”

“The notable news from Carlson’s show yesterday is not the video itself, which is similarly stale, but the crystallization of a Trumpist narrative about the assault on the Capitol that portrays it not as a disaster, nor as an unfortunate but minor event, but as a triumph to be celebrated.”

NBC News: “Video that Carlson didn’t air shows police and rioters engaged in hours of violent combat. Nearly 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack. About 140 officers were assaulted that day, and about 326 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees, including 106 assaults that happened with deadly or dangerous weapons. About 60 people pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement. Two pipe bombs were also planted nearby but were not detonated.”

CBS News: “The narrative last night ignores the tens of thousands of pages of court filings we’ve read and the tonnage of footage already released by the Justice Department and shown in open court… And it ignores the powerful and at times tearful accounts of injured officers who are testifying under oath.”

Tom Nichols: “It’s one thing to assume that the Fox audience isn’t very bright and will believe almost anything—I will gladly stipulate to that—but it’s another to ask them to leap across a chasm of credulity…”

“As counterintuitive as it might be, perhaps the best thing for American democracy would be for Carlson to keep bumbling his way through more January 6 footage and to keep images of the insurrection in front of millions of viewers for as long as possible.”

“If that’s how McCarthy and Carlson intend to restore the image of the GOP as a normal political party, who are any of us to argue with such public-relations geniuses?”

“Every time the pain of that day seems to have ebbed a bit, organizations like Fox rip our wounds wide open again and we are frankly sick of it. Leave us the hell alone…”

— A statement from the family of U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, in response to Tucker Carlson’s attempt to whitewash what happened on January 6.

Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity in text messages bashing their Fox News colleagues Chris Wallace and Leland Vittert after the 2020 presidential election:

INGRAHAM: My anger at the news channel is pronounced.

CARLSON: It should be. We devote our lives to building an audience and they let Chris Wallace and Leland f*cking Vittert wreck it. Too much.

HANNITY: Too much is correct. I am disgusted at this point.

INGRAHAM: I think the three of us have enormous power. We have more power than we know or exercise… Together.

Both Wallace and Vittert have since left the network.

“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait. I hate him passionately.”

— Tucker Carlson, quoted by the Washington Post, in a text two days before the January 6 Capitol riot.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said he does not regret sharing footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson despite receiving bipartisan blowback, arguing that the decision was made for transparency, The Hill reports.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Fox News made “a mistake” by depicting Jan. 6, 2021 as largely peaceful, The Hill reports.

Said McConnell: “I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief of the Capitol police about what happened on Jan. 6… Clearly the chief of the Capitol Police, in my view, correctly described what most of us witnessed first hand on Jan. 6.”