A Couple of Big Lies Crumble

Created
Fri, 13/12/2024 - 11:30
Updated
Fri, 13/12/2024 - 11:30
Remember this? Probably not if you don’t watch Fox and I assume most of you do not. About that weaponization … If you spend much time watching Fox News, or if you look to social media sites such as X for information about American politics and the U.S. government, you have probably heard two specific claims over the past four years. First, that the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was fomented at least in part by government actors, including from the FBI. Second, that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden took millions of dollars in bribes from a Ukrainian businessman. You’ve probably heard those claims because each offers a different lens into the purported corruption of the Biden administration and/or the governmental Deep State — and because right-wing media organizations such as Fox spent months amplifying them. That claim about the bribes, for example, was hyped by Fox host Maria Bartiromo alone hundreds of times. The agent provocateur allegations about the Capitol riot, meanwhile, were a staple of Tucker Carlson’s former Fox News show. Guess what? The DOJ inspector general released a report today showing it was all a lie. Shocker, no? Here’s the lowdown on the Capitol “undercover” FBI story: “We found no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6,” the report reads. There were informants at the Capitol that day,…