News/Commentary

‘Democratic Party icon’ Naomi Wolf serves up ‘full-throated apology’ to right after release of J6 footage

March 13, 2023 | | Print Article

After watching Tucker Carlson’s controversial release of previously unseen January 6, 2021, footage from the Capitol, author Naomi Wolf has written a lengthy letter of apology to conservatives for being “duped” by the Democrats with whom she used to identify and the damage “so much untruth” spread by her former “tribe” has caused “those who ‘put America first’ everywhere.”

Once hailed as a “Democratic Party icon” by Business Insider, Wolf, in her Thursday post to her Substack newsletter, wrote, “I believed a farrago of lies. And, as a result of these lies, and my credulity — and the credulity of people similarly situated to me – many conservatives’ reputations are being tarnished, on false bases.”

“I owe you a full-throated apology,” she wrote to those conservatives.

She blasted “Democrats in leadership” for spinning a “tragedy” into a political talking point.

“You don’t have to agree with Mr Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to conclude that the Democrats in leadership, for their own part, have cherry-picked, hyped, spun, and in some ways appear to have lied about, aspects of January 6, turning a tragedy for the nation into a politicized talking point aimed at discrediting half of our electorate,” she wrote.

“From the start, there have been things about the dominant, Democrats’ and legacy media’s, narrative of Jan 6, that seemed off, or contradictory, to me,” she continued, adding, “That does not mean I agree with the interpretation of these events in general on the right.”

With Carlson’s release of the footage, Wolf says, there is no way to “un-hear the interview that Mr Carlson did with former Capitol police office Tarik Johnson, who said that he received no guidance when he called his superiors, terrified, as the Capitol was breached, to ask for direction” or to “unsee Officer Brian Sicknick, claimed by some Democrats in leadership and by most of the legacy media to have been killed by rioters at the Capitol that day, alive in at least one section of the newly released video.”

What’s more, she said, “There is no way for anyone thoughtful, even if he or she is a lifelong Democrat, not to notice that Sen Chuck Schumer did not say to the world that the footage that Mr Carlson aired was not real.”

“Rather” she noted, “he warned that it was ‘shameful’ for Fox to allow us to see it.”

And Democrats aren’t the only ones she called out.

“Sen Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senate minority leader, did not say the video on Fox News was fake or doctored. He said, rather, that it was ‘a mistake’ to depart from the views of the events held by the chief of the Capitol Police,” she wrote. “This is a statement from McConnell about orthodoxy — not a statement about a specific truth or untruth.”

While she doesn’t agree with Carlson’s depiction of the Jan. 6 events as “mostly peaceful chaos,” Wolf stressed, “you don’t have to agree with Mr Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to believe, as I do, that he engaged in valuable journalism simply by airing the footage that was given to him.”

In conclusion, Wolf wrote:

I am sorry the nation was damaged by so much untruth issued by those with whom I identified at the time.

I am sorry my former “tribe” is angry at a journalist for engaging in —- journalism.

I am sorry I believed so much nonsense.

Though it is no doubt too little, too late —

Conservatives, Republicans, MAGA:

I am so sorry.

Melissa Fine
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