June 30, 2022

On Wednesday, Fox and Friends used an already debunked conspiracy about national guard troops not being called in for security to blame Speaker Pelosi for the insurrection on January 6 instead of Trump.

For the first hour of their program, Fox and Friends ignored Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony altogether and instead whined about topics like this:

This has been right-wing media's efforts to cover up any damaging testimony against Trump.

However, in the second hour, the Trump three-headed propaganda team immediately went into overdrive to deflect from Trump's culpability.

After attacking the Select Committee as being biased and being one-sided because they only had RINO republicans on the committee, Ainsley Earhardt then tossed out the debunked conspiracy theory that Trump ordered 20,000 National Guard troops to be at the Capitol but Nancy Pelosi refused.

"They are only calling in people that are against Trump." she said.

That's a lie. The Washington Examiner, which has a saved seat on all Fox News programs described Hutchinson as a "conservative Trumpist true believer and a tremendously credible one at that."

Earhardt continued, "Keep in mind there are four people that are on the record that say that Trump was required by law and authorized, he authorized up to 20,000 National Guard troops to be there on January 6 that day."

(Notice how Earhardt framed her evidence by using the four people say routine. Who are they? Was it under oath? Of course not.)

"And once he authorized them, then the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the mayor of DC, Muriel Bower, they have to call in these National Guard troops. If they had called in National Guard troops, the chief of police also asked for extra security."

Nancy Pelosi cannot call in the National Guard. Period.

She whined, " Why didn't they use them? Why didn't they call in extra security? And If they had had extra security then this would not have happened."

Earhardt said, "There would not have been anyone storming inside the Capitol. So why isn't the committee investigating Nancy Pelosi or Mariel Bowers, to say why didn't you do what Donald Trump requested and call in the National Guard?"

This whole defense of Trump is a lie.

The AP reports
, "The decision on whether to call National Guard troops to the Capitol is made by what is known as the Capitol Police Board, which is made up of the House Sergeant at Arms, the Senate Sergeant at Arms and the Architect of the Capitol. The board decided not to call the guard ahead of the insurrection but did eventually request assistance after the rioting had already begun, and the troops arrived several hours later."

Also Ainsley failed to tell her audience that Mitch McConnell had power over security officials as well. Where was he?

Politifact has a thorough take-down over this huge lie.

There is no record of former President Donald Trump officially authorizing 20,000 National Guard troops for the U.S. Capitol ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack.

There is no evidence that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied such an authorization, and experts said she doesn’t have the authority to do so in the first place.

A Vanity Fair report said Trump made a passing remark to his acting defense secretary about potentially needing 10,000 National Guard troops, not 20,000. But there’s no evidence the comment was treated as a formal authorization

Read the entire scam. if Trump even made a passing remark, that's not a request for anything.

Lies, lies, and lies. That's all Fox News has to defend Trump with.

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