Carl Cameron on Thursday accused his old network Fox News, where he was chief political correspondent until 2017, of betraying its audience with Tucker Carlson’s upcoming series about the Jan. 6 insurrection.
A widely criticized trailer for “Patriot Purge” — set to stream Monday on Fox Nation — includes the baseless claim that the U.S. Capitol riot was a “false flag” operation.
Hundreds of Donald Trump supporters have been charged in the Jan. 6 violence, stirred by Trump’s lies of election fraud. Trump was impeached for inciting the insurrection.
“There’s whole a bunch of extraordinary madness involved in this,” Cameron told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. “Tucker’s trailer is meant to incite, it’s meant to make people angry.”
Cameron has slammed the “partisan misinformation” pumped out by right-wing hosts at his former employer before. He and Cooper acknowledged Carlson’s full series may not plunge as deeply into conspiracy theory territory as the promo suggests.
But Cameron, once known as “Campaign Carl,” said it was “really frightening and, frankly, it’s a betrayal to the audience, it’s a betrayal to the public.”
“Some of what is espoused or is meant to espouse just in that trailer suggests that there is more violence to come,” Cameron said. “And that’s a big, big rock around the author’s neck if that trailer and this upcoming thing actually does that. There are clearly huge divides in this country, the media shouldn’t be putting more gas on the fire.”