Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Fox News Continuing The Big Lie By Not Airing The January 6th Committee Hearing
Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor regarding the House Select Committee holding its first public hearing today on the insurrection of January 6th and Fox News’ decision not to broadcast the hearing. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
Tonight, the nation will tune in to the House Select Committee on January 6th as they begin their first public hearings on the Capitol Insurrection.
Tonight’s hearings will be a watershed moment in the fight to protect our democracy from the Big Lie of the hard right. The Committee will lay bare the truth that the American people must know: first, that there was tremendous violence. There are still many out there who say there wasn't violence. There was. The pictures show it. The eye witnesses testify to it. And the committee will lay bare the truth that the American people must know, that Donald Trump was at the heart of a coordinated effort to overturn the 2020 elections, to overturn our constitutional order, and inflict permanent damage upon our democracy. It will be essential viewing.
But in one of the most cowardly journalistic decisions in modern memory, Fox News—one of the biggest amplifiers of the Big Lie about January 6th, about Donald Trump and about the election—will not broadcast tonight’s hearing.
Fox News’s decision not to air the biggest hearing in modern history should end any debate that they are not a real news organization.
Fox News is rapidly becoming a propaganda machine of the hard right and it is as plain as day they are scared of their viewers learning the truth about January 6th.
Fox News’s decision not to air the January 6th hearings is dangerous, cowardly, and shameful given that they’ve spent more than a year spreading the Big Lie and misinforming their viewers. Instead of telling the truth, they have isolated their viewers in an alternate reality of conspiracy theories. That is immensely damaging for our democracy.
Even the so-called liberal media, who Fox regularly attacks, tries to tell both sides. Fox News is afraid of telling both sides, because they're afraid of the truth, and they're afraid their viewers may learn that Fox News has lied to them.
I urge Fox News to change very soon. The press has an obligation—always has had that obligation—not to hide the truth from the American people, no matter how painful or inconvenient.
And as a nation, we have a duty to never forget what happened on January 6th: a direct assault on our democracy, and the dangers of that day sadly remain still with us.
###
