Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Texas Democrats who left the state to block a Republican voting bill are committing an insurrection.
51 Texas Democratic lawmakers left the state on Monday to deny Republicans the quorum they need to convene a special legislative session. Texas rules require two-thirds of lawmakers to answer a quorum call.
Without quorum, several bills have been halted included two on voting rights which Democrats say would add new restrictions to the state’s already very restrictive laws governing absentee voting.
Currently, the Texas House Democrats plan to remain out of the state until August 6, when the special session expires.
On Tuesday night, Carlson, who routinely downplays the events of Jan. 6, said this move amounts to an insurrection.
Texas Democrats “violated their sworn duty to represent their voters, and they committed to what amounted to – yes – insurrection,” he said.
“Preventing lawmakers from making laws – shutting down the vote – would not seem like a defense of democracy, in fact it would appear to be just the opposite,” he continued. “It would appear to be an assault on the very core of democracy, which is the legislature, the People’s House. Even diabolical old Vladimir Putin never attempted to do that.”
It contrasts starkly with his approach to the deadly January 6 riot at the US Capitol, which was widely described as an insurrection, though notably the word has not been embraced by Trump supporters, Insider reports.
He has downplayed the violent riots, repeatedly insisting there was “no insurrection” and that it was nothing more than a “political protest that got out of hand.”
“If you don’t bother to pause and learn a single thing from it, from your citizens storming your Capitol building, then you’re a fool,” Carlson said on his show on Jan. 6.
The next day he said it was “a political protest got out of hand after the president recklessly encouraged it,” and mocked CNN for describing it as an insurrection.
“It was not an insurrection,” he reiterated to his audience on January 14 according to Media Matters. “It wasn’t an armed invasion by a brigade of dangerous white supremacists. It wasn’t. Those are lies.”
