According to Liz Cheney, Jan 6 texts from Fox News folks and Don Jr to Mark Meadows are THE SMOKING GUN!

As rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, several leading Fox News pundits and Donald Trump’s eldest son all voiced desperate concerns that the former president was doing nothing to quell the violence and protect those in the building, according to damning text messages unveiled Monday night by the select committee investigating the attack.

The stunning messages, submitted to the panel by Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, revealed that Sean Hannity, Brian Kilmeade and Laura Ingraham — all superstar Fox personalities with enormous conservative followings — and Donald Trump, Jr. were all pressing Meadows to convince the president to intervene during the early hours of the siege.

Last night, during a January 6 hearing, Liz very seriously read the damning evidence into the Congressional Record. 

If you didn’t want to watch nor listen to Liz, I don’t blame you. The implication is that the FoxNews hosts along with Don Jr. were complicit and publicly downplayed what happened on January 6th. Is that really the case? Let’s take a look at some of those text messages shall we?

“We need an Oval Office address, he has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand,” Trump Jr., who is the former president’s eldest son, texted Meadows

Trump Jr. texted Meadows repeatedly during the riot, according to Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney. At one point, Meadows told him, “I’m pushing it hard, I agree.”

Let’s stop there for a minute. Don Jr sent multiple texts to Mark Meadows demanding that his father, the President, speak to the nation and urge everyone in D.C. to stand down. Yet we’ve had Liz, Nancy Pelosi, and lots of Democrats telling us that Trump et al wanted January 6 to happen? Don Jr.’s text messages indicate otherwise. 

How about those Fox News personalities? 

“Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol,” Hannity texted Meadows.

“Mark, president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” Ingraham wrote. “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”

“Please get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished,” Kilmeade said.

According to many, those text messages meant that Fox News hosts were advising President Trump on how to proceed. Furthermore, critics looked at those Jan 6 text messages and arbitrarily decided that everyone mentioned is a complete hypocrite. Why? Because supposedly none of the Fox News people even mentioned anything during subsequent news casts. 

Which is absolutely not the case as Byron York points out. 

Blake’s accusation rested on Ingraham’s opening to her program at 10 p.m. on Jan. 6. “This is the Ingraham Angle from a chaotic Washington tonight,” Ingraham said. “Earlier today, the Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement. Now they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd. We’ll have more on that later. But the point remains, if you were a Trump supporter hoping to display your support for the president, well, today’s antics at the Capitol did just the opposite. There are legitimate concerns about how these elections were conducted and in the middle of a pandemic with all the new restrictions, but that never should have lent any license to violence or other chaos.”

What happened on January 6 was wrong as we’ve made clear here multiple times. What has happened since then via our “political betters” in D.C. led by Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and others is EQUALLY WRONG.

People arrested after January 6 are STILL in jail. Their cases have been delayed multiple times, evidence is being hid by the DOJ, proper medical attention for those is jail is not happening, and no one is being held to account for the shooting of Ashli Babbitt. 

None of that is stopping Liz Cheney from her quest for irrelevance. Nope, she’s running full tilt at those windmills hoping something will eventually stick. 

Just to get this straight, apparently every Fox News host plus Don Jr. was texting Mark Meadows to tell Trump to talk down the rioters…and this somehow demonstrates a coordinated conspiracy to overthrow the government springing from Fox News and its ilk?

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 14, 2021

"We claimed there was a conspiracy to take over the government but our evidence shows the opposite: MAGA people urged POTUS to make a statement and then …. HE DID! Jail them all!" Dems' impeachment Hoax #3 being run by a deranged Liz Cheney who makes Adam Schiff seem competent. https://t.co/Bkwdz1D3vI

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 14, 2021

Interestingly, some people seem to believe that, while these texts lend credence to the idea that there WASN’T a coup plot, they supposedly are proof that Mark Meadows and President Trump didn’t care if the Capitol was overrun by cretins brandishing flags, MAGA banners, and dressing up in Shaman halloween costumes. It’s worth noting that those crashing their way in to the Capitol started doing so while President Trump was IN THE MIDDLE of a speech!

Liz seems to believe that these texts are going to sink Mark Meadows and President Donald Trump. You see, it took him 187 minutes to address the nation. You know what? Perhaps he was trying to get info from Nancy Pelosi and the Capitol Police as to why they weren’t activating the National Guard. Did anyone think of that?

Welcome Instapundit Readers!

Feature Photo Credit: Mark Meadows caricature by Donkeyhotey via Flickr, cropped and modified