Conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg slammed his former Fox News colleagues Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham for propagating “alternative narratives” surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Goldberg, along with Stephen Hayes, resigned in November from his contributor role at Fox News over host Tucker Carlson’s conspiratorial documentary about Jan. 6 called Patriot Purge. In an appearance on Thursday’s MTP Daily on MSNBC, Goldberg lamented that the hosts reportedly called on White House officials to have then-President Donald Trump call off the riot as it was unfolding that day only to spin in the aftermath what transpired at the Capitol.
Goldberg said:
I think that the lesson of Jan. 6 for me in some ways is how the power and the attraction of maintaining the right narrative has become more important than maintaining the right facts or speaking honestly about things. And we saw this almost instantaneously on Jan. 6 where we now know that, you know, that my former fox colleagues, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity and others, saw and recognized at face value that that mob was instigated by the president and motivated by the lies that he had spread and they were saying “this is terrible, don’t do it” and “call it off.”But then, almost immediately, once they went on TV, they started coming up with alternative narratives, alternative interpretations of this that had no bearing on the facts, that had no evidence to rely upon, but they were what
the audience wanted to hear. And we live in an information environment where a lot of platforms, a lot of voices, think they’re in the business of telling audiences what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear.
Last month, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) read aloud texts she said were sent by Fox News hosts to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows during the Jan. 6 riot.
“Mark, the President needs to tell people in the Capitol to go Home. This is hurting all of us,” texted Ingraham. “He is destroying his legacy.”
“Can he make a statement, ask people to leave the Capitol,” asked Hannity.
Watch above, via MSNBC.