People On Fox News Are Actually Speculating That The MAGA Coup Rioters Were Actually Antifa Masquerading As Trump Supporters

There’s a lot to unpack about the events of Wednesday, January 6, which was supposed to be a simple one: A joint session of Congress was supposed to formally declare Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election. But supporters of Donald Trump ruined it, storming the Capitol, rioting and looting, even leading to one person’s death — all while DC police did next to nothing. Many Republicans, including ones who’d questioned the legitimacy of the election, unequivocally denounced the violence and called for civility. Others, though, tried to spin it.

Fox News’s coverage of the day’s events were a hotbed of rabid speculation, with numerous commentators parroting this idea: maybe outside groups infiltrated the violent mob of Trump supporters. On Lou Dobbs Tonight, for instance, the defiantly pro-Trump host let Representative Mo Brooks try to blame Antifa.

“Obvious videotape suggests that Trump supporters themselves were involved,” he admitted. “But it could any number of other groups — anarchists, what have you — that could have taken advantage of this opportunity, to try and vandalize the United States Capitol.”

Dobbs seemed to agree, though he couldn’t help but admit there was “no evidence or proof,” and that they “have nothing more than speculation at this point.”

Fair enough! Sarah Palin, famous for being the late John McCain’s failed running mate in 2008, also swung by the network to offer her two cents. She blamed the media for “a lot of it,” then repeated the idea of instigators that made things somehow worse than it was already. “I think a lot of it is the Antifa folks,” she said. She also had no evidence, but she claimed she’d “been sent pictures of the same characters who were captured in images today, stormed the Capitol, as had been protests on the other side of politics earlier in the summer.”

And of course, Tucker Carlson was not going to let the night’s show end without repeating that line as well. He interviewed someone who’d been involved in the protests, who claimed that “the rumor is that possibly Antifa insurrectionists possibly could have infiltrated some of these movements, maybe instigated some of this.”

So there you go! Of course, it’s hard to figure out which ones were maybe Antifa when so many of the rioters in the many videos openly brag about what they’re doing, all while praising Trump. But at least they got that speculation out on the air before there was any evidence to support it.