As Fox News refused to air the Jan. 6 hearing, hosts bragged about the move, said Dems were flopping, and called it a 'made-for-TV smear campaign'

• Fox News' primetime shows did not air the Jan. 6 committee hearing live on Thursday, as other networks did.
• Host Tucker Carlson bragged about this move, saying Fox "will not be carrying their propaganda live."

Fox News' primetime shows refused to carry the first public hearing of the House committee investigation into the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Instead, its hosts on Thursday night downplayed the riot, criticized the investigation, and bragged about how the network was not showing the hearings live.

Bragging

Host Tucker Carlson opened his show with a monologue praising the decision not to air the hearings at primetime. The hearing instead got live coverage on the Fox Business Network.

Carlson criticized other networks' decision to do so, and taking aim at the hearings themselves.

"The whole thing is insulting. In fact, it's deranged," he said. "And we're not playing along."

"This is the only hour on an American news channel that will not be carrying their propaganda live. They are lying, and we are not going to help them do it," he said, apparently referring to those investigating the riot.

He also downplayed the insurrection, as he had in the past. He called the riot "an outbreak of mob violence, a forgettably minor outbreak by recent standards, that took place more than year and a half ago, but they've never stopped talking about it."

"It was not an insurrection. It was not even close to an insurrection."

Trump allies, including members of Congress, have long sought to play down the Capitol riot and the investigation into it. Many of them, like Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Scott Perry, have refused to comply with the committee's subpoenas. The Justice Department charged the former Trump aides Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro with contempt of Congress for refusing their subpoenas.

Democrats 'flopping'

Host Laura Ingraham said on her show, "The Ingraham Angle," that Democrats had managed to put together a boring show with the hearings.

"Democrats and liberals, they've been flopping in prime-time television for years. It's always the same, right? It's misleading information, vicious innuendo, attempts to connect the dots that never quite pay off. The drumbeat, constant drumbeat of demonization and distraction," she said.

"It's neither entertaining nor edifying. It's just bad programming. Now tonight began with Chair Bennie Thompson captivating a small audience at the January 6 hearing on Capitol Hill, with what ended up being a 12-minute snooze fest that was very heavy on rhetoric."

She later added: "In the end, this was nearly two hours of an unsuccessful, laborious attempt to connect the dots back to Trump, to Trump to a coup that never happened. Now we know why the press has been publicly fretting after watching this, worried that Americans wouldn't tune in to this January 6 extravaganza." She did not give further specifics.

Called the hearings a Trump smear campaign

Hannity called the hearings the "dullest, the most boring."

He called them a "multi-hour Democratic fundraiser," without offering any evidence, and a "made-for-TV smear campaign against President Trump featuring sliced and diced video that fits their pre-determined political narrative."

Hannity also painted the riot as a security failure for which Congress was responsible.