'Red meat': Columnist suggests real reason Mike Johnson is releasing blurred Jan. 6 tapes

House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) appears to be bowing to right-wing pressure to release more than 40,000 hours of security video recorded during the Jan. 6 insurrection — but he is taking a step to cover up a flaw in that plan.

The Louisiana Republican clarified Tuesday that the recordings would blur out faces of the rioters, saying the videos would be doctored to protect them from being "retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ."

And, writes MSNBC columnist Hayes Brown, that decision reveals the speaker's motivations.

"It’s worth taking a step back, though, to look at how Johnson’s two choices — to release the tapes and to blur the faces of participants — were fueled by two distinct desires," Brown wrote.

"In making the tapes public, he was acting to protect himself from the fury of the far right. But in blurring their faces, Johnson is in essence protecting these rioters from themselves."

The Department of Justice has had those tapes for years now. Obscuring the rioters' faces in reality only hinders the work of the amateur sleuths – or “sedition hunters” – who have been scouring video and photo evidence to identify participants and alert the authorities, Brown said.

A spokesman for Johnson more or less admitted that when asked about his comments.

“Faces are to be blurred from public viewing room footage to prevent all forms of retaliation against private citizens from any non-governmental actors,” said his deputy chief of staff for communications Raj Shah, who worked as a deputy White House press secretary in the Trump administration. “The Department of Justice already has access to raw footage from January 6, 2021.”

That raises the question of why Johnson bothered to release the tapes in the first place.

"The short answer is 'because far-right members would be mad if he didn’t,'" Brown wrote.

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"While he took up the speaker’s gavel with their blessing, that luster faded when he worked to pass a short-term spending bill with mostly Democratic votes, same as [Kevin] McCarthy did before his ouster. And, keeping the similarities going, Johnson has opted to follow McCarthy’s strategy for distracting the hounds nipping at his heels: toss as much red meat as possible."

That suggests Johnson knows he stands on the same thin ice that his predecessor, who was removed from the speakership in October by the GOP's right-wing flank – who may not have thought out their own demand for the tapes to be released.

"If Johnson knows that there’s nothing that will help the people who are clamoring for the tapes to be released, he couldn’t say as much," Brown wrote. "He also couldn’t continue to sit on them as long as the attacks from his right were still incoming.

"Blurring the video to keep the tapes from actively hurting the people calling for their release was his form of compromise, since it was clear that they hadn’t thought that far ahead themselves."