Hawley's Infamous Chicken Run Was Really a Chicken Jog, Tucker Carlson Argues

Thanks to Tucker Carlson, we finally know Josh Hawley's defense to accusations that he ran like a coward after inciting a mob on January 6: Other people ran faster.

Using 40,000 hours of new footage released thanks to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Carlson last night attempted to attack the House Select Committee and vindicate Hawley. Think of it as the FoxNews remix — edited to suggest Hawley was falsely accused of inciting a riot and rank cowardice, and Ashli Babbitt was murdered.

"There's quite a bit of video you haven't seen," Carlson intones, "video that tells quite a different story about what happened on January 6."

You may wonder ... what is this "quite a different story"? Did Hawley not raise his fist and encourage the people gathered outside the Capitol to turn militant? Did Hawley not soon after run from the same mob he helped to incite?

Nope and nope.

He just ran more slowly.

Here's Carlson:

"In fact, the surveillance video was reviewed shows that famous clip was a sham, edited deceptively by the January 6 committee. The video was propaganda, not evidence. The actual videotape shows Hawley was one of many legislators being ushered out of the building by Capitol Hill police officers — and in fact, Hawley was at the back of the pack.

"The 'coward tape' was a lie — one of many from the January 6 committee."

The Josh Hawley Coward Tape Proves to Be a Lie After Further Review from the @TuckerCarlson Team

"The surveillance footage we reviewed shows that famous clip was a sham, edited deceptively by the January 6th Committee. The clip was propaganda, not evidence. The actual videotape… https://t.co/vbrGyz9hi3 pic.twitter.com/DDf4j1rEwx

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) March 7, 2023

That's all they got? Forty-thousand hours worth of tape handed to you by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and all you can say is that when danger reared its ugly head, Senator Hawley bravely turned and fled behind his colleagues?

Incidentally, Hawley isn't the only person at the Capitol that day with Missouri connections who got a closer look on Carlson's show last night.

Insisting that the tapes show that only a few bad apples were involved in the riot that day — "a small percentage" who were "hooligans" who "committed vandalism" — Carlson focused on Jacob "Q-Anon Shaman" Chansley, whom he shows getting a polite treatment from Capitol police.

Chansley and friends, Carlson argues, were not hooligans. Like the "overwhelming majority" of people there that day, Carlson says, "They were peaceful, they were orderly and meek. These were not insurrectionists, they were sightseers" — sightseers who "queued up in neat little lines" at that.

Thanks in part to a nasty little note he left for then-Vice President Pence, the fact he was one of the first rioters into the Capitol and the speared flagpole he brandished, Chansley is now serving four years in prison after being represented by noted St. Louis attorney Al Watkins. Watkins earned headlines for suggesting clients like Chansley were "fucking short-bus people" who'd been led astray by former President Donald Trump.

Apparently, he should have hired Tucker Carlson instead. Surely Carlson's full-throated defense and "neat little lines" would hold up to cross-examination from federal prosecutors .... right?

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