Sean Hannity andLaura Ingraham went after the House January 6 committee on their Tuesday shows.- The committee had released texts showing them pleading for Trump to intervene in the Capitol riot.
The Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham attacked the January 6 House committee after it released text messages showing them pleading for President Donald Trump to try to stop the Capitol riot.
The messages from the hosts to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, which were released by the committee at a Monday hearing, showed them urging Meadows to get Trump to release a statement calling off the rioters.
- Hannity's message read: "Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol."
- Ingraham said: "Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy."
The messages stood in contrast to how the hosts described the day's events to their viewers on the night of January 6, when they condemned the violence but suggested that far-left agitators may have been partly responsible.
On Tuesday night, both Hannity and Ingraham assailed the media in their commentaries about the texts, with Hannity saying he had not been contacted for comment. Insider contacted a Fox News spokesperson Tuesday morning and did not receive a response addressing the controversy until early Wednesday.
Hannity said there was no discrepancy between what he told his viewers and what he messaged Meadows. He then pivoted to criticizing Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the two Republican members of the committee, for reading his text out at Monday's hearing.
He said Tuesday: "I said to Mark Meadows the exact same thing I was saying live on the radio at that time and on TV that night on January 6 and well beyond January 6."
He later added: "And by the way, where is the outrage in the media over my private text messages being released again publicly? Do we believe in privacy in this country? Apparently not."
Hannity called himself "an honest and straightforward person."
"I say the same thing in private that I say to all of you," he added.
"Liz Cheney knows this," Hannity said. "She doesn't seem to care. She's interested in one thing and one thing only: smearing Trump and purging him from the party."
In his January 6 broadcasts, Hannity did not discuss Trump's capacity to influence the people at the Capitol.
He said in one of them: "Those who truly support President Trump, those that believe they are part of the conservative movement in this country, you do not — we do not support those who commit acts of violence."
On his January 6 show, Hannity also said of who was responsible: "I don't care if the radical left, radical right — I don't know who they are."
Ingraham on her Tuesday show also said there was no discrepancy between what she said on air and what she said privately to Meadows on January 6.
In her on-air January 6 remarks, she had sought to divert some of the blame toward antifa, a loose collection of anti-fascist groups.
She said: "Now, they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd."
She later added: "But the point remains, if you were a Trump supporter hoping to display your support for the president, well, today's antics at the Capitol did just the opposite."
On Tuesday, she sought to downplay the Capitol attack, questioning whether it could be described as an "insurrection."
"Both publicly and privately, I said what I believe: that the January 6 breach at the Capitol was a terrible thing. Crimes were committed," Ingraham said. "Some people were unfairly hounded and persecuted, but it was not an insurrection. To say anything different is beyond dishonest, and it ignores the facts of that day."
In a Wednesday response to Insider's request for comment on the discrepancy between the hosts' public and private messaging, a Fox News spokesperson released a list of quotes from Ingraham and Hannity in which they condemned the January 6 riot, some of which are mentioned above.
The House voted Tuesday to recommend the Justice Department charge Meadows with contempt of Congress after he refused to fully cooperate with the January 6 inquiry.