Fox News’ Role in Fueling Jan. 6 Is ‘Dramatically Overlooked,’ Brian Stelter Says | Video
Former CNN anchor Brian Stelter joined MSNBC’s “The Reidout” on Monday for a segment discussing Fox News’ role in fueling rioters leading up to Jan. 6 which he calls “incredibly incendiary.”
“We all focus so much on that single day,” Stelter, the author of new book about Fox News “Network of Lies,” said. “And there’s a lot of good reasons why, but January 6 has become shorthand for something much bigger.”
Stelter continued to argue that it’s crucial that the media makes it “clear that we’re talking about something that actually built up for months and months.”
“Ultimately, this is about the entire Trump presidency and what went wrong on January 6, is because of what went wrong in those months and even years beforehand,” the media reporter noted.
Stelter added that Fox’s rhetoric in the lead-up to Jan. 6 has been “grossly overlooked,” as a massive factor in the events of that day.
“That rhetoric from Mark Levine and Jeanine Pirro saying that ‘we need to fight, we need to do what the Revolutionary War soldiers did, what our ancestors did.’ That was incredibly incendiary in the days leading up to this attack,” Stelter said.
The media reporter continued “We know that some rioters bought plane tickets and flew to Washington because of what they were being told on television, because of the lies that were being spread on television. I think it’s an underappreciated part of the story.”
“If you have this go on for weeks and months, you can’t be surprised by the outcome,” Stelter said.
Anchor Joy Reid chimed in saying “And yet you have these texts from Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, and Brian Kilmeade doing these emergency texts, get them off TV, make a statement.”
Stelter replied by invoking a text message from Fox News anchor Sean Hannity to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows that said “I’m very worried about the next 48 hours.”
“What did Sean Hannity know? What did he think was going to happen on January 6, why was he so worried,” Stelter questioned. “He’s never answered that question.”
“Frankly, if you’re President Biden, if you’re a Democrat, if you’re the Biden campaign, you need to focus less on January 6 as a date and more on what happened in the month before and frankly, the weeks after the attack,” Stelter concluded.
Fox News declined to comment on Stelter’s remarks.
Watch video at the top of this post for more from the MSNBC segment.
Disclosure: Natalie Korach served as a freelance researcher for the publication of Brian Stelter’s “Network of Lies.”
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