Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), vice chair of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, read urgent Jan. 6 text messages Monday between Mark Meadows, former White House chief of staff to former President Donald Trump, and "multiple Fox News hosts," including Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade, and Sean Hannity, plus lawmakers in the Capitol during the riot, administration officials, and Donald Trump Jr.
All of them strongly urged Meadows to get Trump to tell his rioting supporters to leave the Capitol immediately and go home, something Trump did not do for several hours.
"The hearing was not carried on Fox News on Monday evening," The Washington Post reports. On Monday night, Hannity had Meadows on his Fox News show to discuss the committee's vote to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress, for the reasons Cheney laid out. In their eight-minute interview, "Hannity did not ask Meadows about the texts from Trump Jr. or others and did not mention the message he had sent the former chief of staff," Axios reports.
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"Ingraham, whose show aired immediately after Hannity, did not mention that her text to Meadows had also been read by the committee," Mediate reports. "On the other hand, she did not interview the former chief-of-staff." Kilmeade co-hosts the morning show Fox & Friends.
The Fox News website also had no mention of the text messages Monday night, including in its article about the Jan. 6 panel voting to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress.
The Jan. 6 text messages made public Monday "stand in contrast with some of the messages that Ingraham, Hannity and Kilmeade sent to Fox News viewers in appearances on the night of Jan. 6," the Post reports. While they all expressed discomfort and displeasure with the siege on Jan. 6, they also all suggested it was carried out by left-wing agitators, not Trump supporters, or insisted the majority of Trump supporters were protesting peacefully.
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