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It took some time, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy finally shed some light this week on his decision to give Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exclusive access to sensitive Jan. 6 security footage. In fact, the Republican leader’s explanation focused heavily on a single word.
“I promised I would give you the truth regarding January 6th, and now I am delivering,” the House speaker wrote in a fundraising appeal this week. He used similar rhetoric in comments to The New York Times, justifying his deal with the controversial television personality by saying, “I promised.”
There’s no shortage of problems with McCarthy’s tactics and defense, but his choice of words led to a related question: To whom did he make this “promise”?
CBS News had a good report along these lines:
McCarthy — who has already been fundraising on the move — did indeed promise to release the footage as part of his bid to become speaker, and it was something Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz had specifically been demanding. In fact, it was on a lengthy list of demands that Gaetz walked into McCarthy’s office with on the Monday night before the speaker’s vote, according to a GOP source familiar with the list.
One caveat is in order. As the CBS News report added, the Florida Republican’s list of demands did not explicitly dictate that the security footage would go to Fox News’ Carlson. That specific element was reportedly “decided later.”
In other words, we’re talking about a two-step process. The first was McCarthy’s negotiations with Gaetz — who, up until recently, was a congressman facing a federal criminal investigation for alleged sex trafficking. As MSNBC’s Alex Wagner explained on last night’s show, the House speaker agreed to a series of concessions to his far-right members in order to secure the gavel, and we now know that the Jan. 6 footage was a part of these negotiations.
The second step was McCarthy agreeing to give Carlson exclusive access — which wasn’t specifically part of the original agreement with Gaetz and his cohorts, but which the Californian ultimately agreed to anyway for reasons he has not yet elaborated on. (He told the Times, “I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment,” which was effectively gibberish given the circumstances.)
Stepping back, it was seven weeks ago tomorrow when McCarthy managed to claim the speaker’s gavel, and ever since, we’ve learned incrementally about the many side deals the GOP leader struck in order to prevail. This week, yet another such deal came to public light, and this one, according to Democratic leaders and law enforcement officials, puts Capitol security at risk.
How many more “promises” to extremists will McCarthy continue to fulfill in the coming weeks and months? The fact that we have no idea is unsettling.