Like the shepherd boy who cried wolf, media election deniers refuse to come clean and admit they lied to the American public that a stolen election caused the defeat of former President Trump in 2020.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson continued his fabulist narrative this week, minimizing the Jan. 6 violent attack on the national Capitol with cherry-picked calmer moments from 40,000 hours of security video given to him exclusively by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to fulfill a promise to his hard-right Republican colleagues.
Not surprisingly, Carlson analyzed the attack as “no big deal” and compared the participants to “sightseers.”
He wants you to disbelieve your lying eyes if you witnessed the riotous activity on live TV or later on Capitol security video featured by the Jan. 6 House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attempt to reverse the election of Democrat Joe Biden as president.
Deeds such as overpowering police barriers, climbing Capitol walls to smash windows for entry, wielding flagpoles for spears, breaking through doors, dousing police with bear spray, forcefully resisting requests to leave the building, riffling through desks in the Senate chamber, clamoring for the hanging of Vice President Pence and other riotous conduct.
“The protesters were angry,” Carlson advised his viewers, even though he showed only snippets of the anger. “They believed that the election they had just voted in had been unfairly conducted. They were right. In retrospect, it is clear the 2020 election was a grave betrayal of American democracy. Given the facts that have since emerged about that election, no honest person can deny it.”
Cry that again, Tucker. No honest person believes you.
Then there is podcaster Jenna Ellis, former senior legal advisor to Trump and counsel to his 2020 campaign. In a challenge to her Colorado law license, she admitted making statements on national television and Twitter in November and December of 2020 “that were false” and undermined the public’s confidence in the election.
Colorado’s presiding disciplinary judge, Byron M. Large, considered Ellis’ admissions serious enough for a public censure. Thursday, the judge released the disciple document. Ellis promptly deemed it a success because she did not lose her license to practice law. She denied lying to the public.
“The politically-motivated Left failed miserably in their attempt to destroy me,” Ellis tweeted. “They’re now trying to falsely discredit me by saying I admitted I lied. That is FALSE. I would NEVER lie. Lying requires INTENTIONALLY making a false statement. I never did that, nor did I stipulate to or admit that.”
Attached is a description of some of the remarks Ellis stipulated as false and misleading statements she made about the election.
• Nov. 20, 2020. Appeared on Mornings with Maria (Bartiromo) on Fox Business, stating: “We have affidavits from witnesses, we have voter intimidation, we have the ballots that were manipulated, we have all kinds of statics that show this was a coordinated effort in all of these states to transfer votes either from Trump to Biden, to manipulated the ballots, to count them in secret.”
• That same day appeared on Spicer & Co., declaring, “with all those states (Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia) combined we know that the election was stolen from President Trump and we can prove it.”
• Nov. 23, 2020. Appeared on the Ari Melber Show on MSNBC and stated: “The election was stolen and Trump won by a landslide.”
• Nov. 30, 2020. Appeared again on Mornings with Maria on Fox Business, stating: “President Trump is right that there was widespread fraud in this election, we have at least six states that were corrupted, if not more, through their voting systems.”
• Dec. 5, 2020. Appeared on Justice with Judge Jeanine on Fox News and said, “we have over 500,000 votes (in Arizona) that were cast illegally…”
• Dec. 22, 2020. Tweeted, “I spent an hour with @Dan Caplis for an in-depth discussion about President @realDonaldTrump’s fight for election integrity, the overwhelming evidence proving this (election) was stolen, and why fact-finding and truth – not politics – matters!”
Jenna Ellis is the shepherd who cried wolf in Aesop’s fable.
