Tucker Carlson began his show on Thursday evening by lashing out at the January 6 committee as it began its first prime time public hearing into the Capitol attack.

       “It tells you a lot about the priorities of our ruling class that the rest of us are getting yet another lecture about January 6 tonight – from our moral inferiors, no less,” he said at the opening of his Fox News show, which began at the same time as the hearing.

       “They are lying and we are not going to help them do it," he added.

       Fox News, the nation’s top cable news channel, announced prior to the hearings that it would not broadcast them live, as every other major network planned to do, but would cover it as “as news warrants.” The network carried coverage on Fox Business Network and was streaming the proceedings online.

       The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection and Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election promised never-before-seen video and a mass of other evidence in its public hearings.

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       Mr Carlson, who has repeatedly played down the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, referred to the events of that day as a “forgettably minor” outbreak of violence.

       He then made reference to gas prices and inflation, and claimed: “This country has never been closer in its history to a nuclear war.”

       “The whole thing is insulting, in fact, it’s deranged,” he added.

       Mr Carlson’s Fox News colleague Sean Hannity, whose onwn show follows Mr Carlson’s, called the committee hearings “the dullest, the most boring, there’s absolutely nothing new, multi-hour Democratic fund-raiser masquerading as a January 6 hearing.”