Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham blasted the House’s partisan Jan. 6 Commission—and, specifically, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming—for publicizing private texts that they sent to then-President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in attempt to embarrass them.
Hannity, Ingraham slam Cheney for releasing Jan. 6 messages to Meadows https://t.co/WPfv4T6L7V pic.twitter.com/mQwD7JOxLv
— New York Post (@nypost) December 15, 2021
The texts according to The Hill, urged the then-president to make a statement asking rioters at the US Capitol to leave the area following a mostly peaceful rally that turned unruly during Congress’s Joint Session to certify the disputed results of the 2020 election.
“Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol,” Hannity texted Meadows according to The Hill.
Ingraham’s text told Meadows that Trump needed “to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” saying, “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”
Republicans were quick to note that the texts actually debunked the ubiquitous left-wing narrative that the four-hour uprising was a conspiracy planned to disrupt—if not depose—corrupt congressional lawmakers.
On his show Tuesday, Hannity said there was no inconsistency between his public and private messaging in the wake of the revolt.
“I said to Mark Meadows the exact same thing I was saying live on the radio at the time and on TV that night, on Jan. 6 and well beyond Jan. 6,” he told viewers, according to Fox News.
In both cases, Hannity unequivocally condemned the violence.
“Let me stop here and be crystal clear,” Hannity told TV viewers on Jan. 6. “Those who truly support President Trump, those that believe they are part of the conservative movement in this country, we do not support those that commit acts of violence.”
Ingraham likewise repudiated the unlawful actions of a few rogue rally-goers.
“The Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement,” she said at the time according the New York Post.
“Now they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there were some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd,” she continued. “The point remains, if you were a Trump supporter trying to display your support for the president, today’s antics at the Capitol did just the opposite.”
The Jan. 6 Committee—led by Cheney and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.—is trying to make a case that the riots were part of an organized plot by people high-up in the Trump government to invalidate the results of the 2020 election.
Conservatives have largely dismissed the faux indignation, noting that Democrats routinely shrugged off similar acts of violence, lawlessness and disruption when committed by left-wing perpetrators to advance their radical agenda.
Trump and many of his allies have slammed it as a fishing expedition intended to gather intelligence on political adversaries and to provide Democrats with a distraction to campaign on during the 2022 midterms, when a red tsunami is expected to rebuke the failed policies of the Biden administration.
“That the breach of the capitol on Jan. 6 was a terrible thing,” Ingraham said, according to Yahoo News.
“Crimes were committed, some people were unfairly hounded and persecuted and prosecuted,” she continued. “But it was not an insurrection—to say anything different is beyond dishonest, and ignores the fact of that day.”
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
