Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham blasted Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) after she read their text messages to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows aloud during a House select committee hearing on the U.S. Capitol riots.
“I am an honest, straightforward person," Hannity told viewers. "I say the same thing in private that I say to all of you. Liz Cheney knows this, she doesn’t seem to care. She’s interested in one thing and one thing only — smearing Donald Trump and purging him from the party."
Congressional investigators revealed that Hannity, Ingraham and "Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade texted Meadows on Jan. 6 to ask him to encourage Donald Trump to call on his supporters to stand down.
"Mark, the president needs to tell the people in the Capitol to go home," Ingraham texted Meadows. "This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy."
In response to Cheney's outing, Ingraham said on her show Tuesday night, “The entire Jan. 6 campaign has become one of revenge and defamation, of false characterization and false equivalencies."
"Please get him on TV," Kilmeade texted Meadows on Jan. 6. "Destroying everything you have accomplished."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told reporters Tuesday that he was not in personal contact with Meadows or any other White House officials on Jan. 6, but said "I do think we're both watching, as you are, what is unfolding on the House side, and it will be interesting to reveal all of the participants who were involved."
In addition to the Fox News hosts' text messages to Meadows during the Capitol riots, Cheney revealed that other GOP lawmakers were caught red-handed working to delay or halt the counting of electoral votes. The lawmakers were not mentioned publicly by name at the committee hearing.
