Capitol cops escorted "QAnon Shaman" to Senate floor

Tucker Carlson releases anti-narrative tapes from the January 6 riot

Dear Friends –

I’ve got several things to share with you, in a sort of grab bag of goodies this morning. So, in no particular order, here are a few stories that caught my eye. I’d love to hear your reactions and continue the conversation on each of them in the comments!\.

1.) Tucker releases anti-narrative January 6 footage

On Fox News, Tucker Carlson released the first of the January 6th tapes that were released by the House to him.

The first two takeaways: 1. the crazy looking “QAnon Shaman” was actually escorted onto the Senate floor by Capitol police officers, and 2. Officer Brian Sicknick, who died from a stroke the day after the riot, appeared uninjured after his confrontation with protesters.

“To this day, media accounts describe Sicknick as someone who was, quote, 'slain' on January 6,” Carlson said. “The video we reviewed proves that is a lie.”

Interestingly, while Fox has a short clip of Tucker’s show, there’s no writeup of his revelations on its web site. The story is featured prominently on the Daily Mail and the New York Post.

2.) CNN told staff not to pursue the lab leak theory

We’ve discussed in previous newsletters how the theory that Covid escaped from a lab in Wuhan is gaining credibility among government organizations. And it all happened just three years after this was dismissed as a conspiracy theory.

Now, we’re learning that former CNN boss Jeff Zucker explicitly told network employees not to explore the lab leak theory and dismissed it as a “Trump talking point.” Actually, Trump’s consideration of the theory is probably why a lot of liberals (and liberal media) didn’t look into the theory, but dismissed it as racist.

3.) Russell Brand takes MSNBC journalist John Heilemann to school

And … sticking with the school analogy … Brand gave him one helluva lecture. He called Heilemann out for MSNBC’s lies and propaganda and told him that “To sit within the castle of MSNBC throwing rocks at Fox News is ludicrous.” He ended by saying that instead of bickering with each other, networks should be encouraging “new political systems that genuinely represent ordinary Americans so that we can overcome cultural differences.”

Watch the entire, very satisfying clip, here:

Chief Nerd @TheChiefNerd

Russell Brand Calls Out MSNBC's Hypocrisy on COVID "Do you want an example? The ludicrous, outrageous criticisms of Joe Rogan around Ivermectin deliberately referring to it as a horse medicine when they know it's an effective medicine!" @rustyrockets @billmaher @joerogan

Also, during part of the interview, Heilemann challenged Brand to come up with just one example of an MSNBC host knowingly lying to their audience. This fun thread comes up with, well, definitely more than one.

4.) ‘60 Minutes’ weak report … and a fierce follow-up

Fox News took a look at a Scott Pelley “60 Minutes” report from 2020 … and the follow-up by Lesley Stahl one year later. In May of 2020, Pelley highlighted Peter Daszak, the president of the group EcoHealth Alliance and one of the biggest critics of the lab leak theory (oh, and also a guy whose group benefitted from NIH funding but I’m sure that’s irrelevant.)

In May of 2020, Pelley reported that the Trump administration cut off EcoHealth's funding because of a "political disinformation campaign targeting China's Wuhan Institute." He allowed Daszak to criticize the lab leak theory, with very little pushback.

One year later, Lesley Stahl interviewed Daszak again and called the lab leak a “leading theory.” She interviewed a WHO adviser who was calling for a new investigation into Covid origins because the first one was basically conducted by the Chinese government. Although Daszak continued to insist the theory was “extremely unlikely”, Stahl pushed back much harder than her colleague. She pointed out that China “destroyed evidence, they punish scientists who were trying to give evidence on this very question of the origin."

And now, we continue to get more evidence that she was right to question him.

5.) Fauci’s puppetry

Newly released emails shared by House Republicans show that Dr. Fauci “prompted” a February 2020 paper to disprove the likelihood that Covid originated in a lab, which was forwarded to him for his editing and approval. He then shared the study at a White House news conference weeks later.

Of course, three years later, we now know that Fauci was funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, and that if Covid was found to have come from the lab where U.S.-funded research happened, Fauci and other prominent government scientists would be under embarrassing suspicion and scrutiny.

All fascinating stories. All turning the mainstream media narrative on its head. So … what do you think about them?

Finally, The People vs. The Media