Fox News host Laura Ingraham went on the offensive against members of the media, who she says mischaracterized her messaging during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, as well as Rep. Liz Cheney.
She started the segment Tuesday acknowledging Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the Jan. 6 committee, reading aloud on Monday Ingraham’s text message to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows urging him to have former president Donald Trump tell Capitol rioters to go home.
“This sent the left-wing media hacks into spin-and-defame mode. Now of course the regime media was trying to twist this message to try to tar me as a liar, a hypocrite who privately sounded the alarm on Jan. 6 but publicly downplayed it,” Ingraham said.
“That big lie was peddled by the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake, who grossly mischaracterized what I said in an attempt to smear me as some Jan. 6 denier,” Ingraham continued. She noted Blake wasn’t alone, highlighting a story written by CNN’s “chief propagandist” Brian Stelter.
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Ingraham defended her previous statements and reporting, claiming she did not push the theory that the election was stolen from Trump. She asserted that she never said she believed people from antifa were at the Capitol riot — rather, she had cited other news agencies and had clarified in her reporting that those claims were unsubstantiated.
“Had they bothered to actually watch what I said the night of Jan. 6 or read any of my public tweets from the afternoon of Jan. 6 then they couldn’t have denied the truth,” Ingraham said.
The host then showed some receipts, playing a clip from her reporting on Jan. 6 in which she called the rioters “criminals” and said if they had intended to show their support for Trump by storming the Capitol, then their antics “did just the opposite.” She also shared screenshots of her tweets on Jan. 6, including one calling the security breach at the Capitol “disgraceful” and saying Trump needed to “tell everyone to leave the building. Now.” Another one commented on how the riot would hurt the “MAGA” movement, Trump’s legacy, and the country.
In Ingraham’s text message to Meadows, which Cheney revealed Monday, Ingraham said, “Mark, president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.” Cheney said Ingraham’s text message and others, nonprivileged records Meadows provided to the panel, are “further evidence of President Trump’s supreme dereliction of duty during those 187 minutes.”
Ingraham said she stands by her comments and believes the attack was a “terrible thing.” While she acknowledged trespassers had committed crimes, Ingraham also insisted people are being unfairly prosecuted and that Jan. 6 was not an “insurrection.”
“To say anything different is beyond dishonest, and it ignores the facts of that day,” she added.
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Ingraham followed fellow Fox News host Sean Hannity in addressing text messages sent to Meadows on Jan. 6 and criticizing Cheney, who has emerged as a leading anti-Trump Republican. Ingraham said she expects Cheney to lose her next GOP primary in Wyoming.
“The real big lie is the expansive narrative of Jan. 6 that these clowns have made the center of their political existence. It’s time to face facts. Shut down the false narrative, and treat Cheney and her clack the way the American people treat them: by tuning them out,” she concluded.
