Dear Commons Community,
Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News politics editor who was fired from the network last year, will testify Monday before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Stirewalt told the “Morning in America” program on NewsNation, where he now works as political editor, that he was invited to give evidence and will do so next week. As reported by the Huffington Post and other news media.
Stirewalt became the subject of abuse from former President Donald Trump’s supporters after the network was the first to declare Joe Biden the winner of Arizona in the 2020 presidential election.
The journalist was fired by Fox News in January 2021 as part of what the network called a restructuring.
“When I defended the call for Biden in the Arizona election, I became a target of murderous rage from consumers who were furious at not having their views confirmed,” Stirewalt wrote in an op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times later that month.
“The rebellion on the populist right against the results of the 2020 election was partly a cynical, knowing effort by political operators and their hype men in the media to steal an election or at least get rich trying,” he continued.
He has been a vocal critic of the network’s latest programming choices, including Tucker Carlson’s “Patriot Purge” show. Stirewalt compared Carlson’s documentary to the “garbage” shared by Alex Jones on his Infowars website.
“What Fox allowed in Tucker Carlson’s documentary which said that Jan. 6 was potentially a false flag operation undertaken by the federal government and that Americans were being put in Guantanamo over pictures of waterboarding, was beyond reckless,” Stirewalt told the “Talkline” podcast with Hoppy Kercheval on West Virginia’s MetroNews in December 2021.
During an interview for an Australian documentary in August 2021, the now NewsNation political editor also lamented the role of Fox News in amplifying Trump’s election lies.
“Fox had the opportunity to use its position to tell the truth for the good of the country and failed to use the power and resources that it had to stand up to Donald Trump,” Stirewalt said.
While it is unclear what exactly Stirewalt will testify about, Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said Monday’s 10 a.m. hearing will lay out Trump’s lies and show how those motivated the Capitol rioters.
“When the committee reconvenes next week, we’re going to examine the lies that convinced those men and others to storm the Capitol to try to stop the transfer of power,” Thompson said at the end of Thursday’s hearing. “We’re going to take a close look at the first part of Trump’s attack on the rule of law when he hit the fuse that ultimately resulted in the violence of Jan. 6.”
After Thursday’s hearing, Stirewalt argued former Vice President Mike Pence is emerging as a “hero in the story.” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said during the hearing that it was Pence who made efforts to deploy the National Guard on Jan. 6.
“President Trump gave no order to deploy the National Guard that day and he made no effort to work with the Department of Justice to coordinate and deploy law enforcement assets,” Cheney said. “Vice President Pence did each of those things.”
Stirewalt was one of the good guys at Fox News who was fired because he told the truth. And we know that Fox can’t stand the truth!
Tony
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