Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) tried to placate both sides with his framing of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Cramer joined Chuck Todd on Sunday for Meet The Press, where he fielded questions about Congressional budget negotiations and the current landscape of the GOP’s 2024 primary. In time, Todd moved the conversation toward Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who sparked a political firestorm last week by once again portraying the U.S. Capitol rioters as “meek” and casual “sightseers,” rather than a mob of vandals who violently forced their way into Congress hoping to overthrow the 2020 election.

Carlson’s narrative was directly contradicted by former Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday night when he said “what happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way.”

“Where do you come down?” Todd asked. “On Tucker Carlson’s side or on Mike Pence’s side?”

Cramer answered by saying “not everybody [from January 6th] is at the same level of crime,” though “clearly it wasn’t a peaceful protest.”

Well, first of all, both sides can be right rhetorically, but the problem is, you know, a four-hour stroll through the Capitol that’s marred by a half-hour of rioting doesn’t make it a peaceful protest. And nobody was supposed to be in the Capitol, so there’s not a single person who’s completely innocent of wrongdoing, but not everybody that day is at the same level of crime. Five hundred and eighteen, by the way, have confessed to committing crimes that day. Four hundred and twenty have been prosecuted and sentenced. So clearly, it wasn’t a peaceful protest. That’s not to say that the vast majority of them don’t have regret, or they didn’t understand the severity of what they were doing, or the severity of what some other people were doing. I do think it’s unfair to put them all in the same bucket. I’ve never felt like democracy is actually in trouble. We survived a civil war, we’re going to survive this as well.

Cramer went on to mock the Jan. 6 Committee while suggesting that the GOP shouldn’t try re-litigating the riot. Todd declined to follow up with Cramer about his description of Jan. 6 as, in part, “a four-hour stroll through the Capitol,” instead asking if the senator had any “pause” with Fox News in light of their recently revealed conduct.

The senator replied:

Well, first of all, I don’t confuse my job with anybody at Fox News, and least of all, the entertainers in prime-time. That’s not to say they don’t add some value. I don’t confuse Tucker Carlson with Bret Baier or Dana Perino or Bill Hemmer, any more than I confuse some of the MSNBC personalities with what you do on Sunday mornings. I just think that there’s just way too much entertainment out there.

What I do regret, probably as much as anything about the release of the 41,000 hours, is that it was released to one person in primetime, who is, you know, rather sensational in his approach, and rather than just releasing it to everybody. I think transparency absolutely is the best way to go.

Watch above via NBC.

The post GOP Senator Describes Jan. 6 as ‘Four-Hour Stroll Through the Capitol That’s Marred By a Half Hour of Rioting’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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