Some people were expecting some explosive news this week from Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News. He had, after all, been handed what could have been something extremely volatile -- access to all 40,000-plus hours of video footage from the January 6th insurrection attempt at the United States Capitol. Carlson himself predicted his revelations from this extraordinary access would land with a bang. But what he just unveiled wasn't just "not a bang," it barely even qualifies as a whimper. It fizzled. It was a dud. A gigantic nothingburger.

What Carlson unveiled on his show was a very weak attempt to make exactly the same nonsensical case that Representative Andrew Clyde proposed, mere months after a violent mob attacked the seat of American government:

Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion, staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures. You know, if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January 6, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.

Got that? They weren't violent insurrectionists bent on overturning a presidential election and preventing the peaceful transfer of power -- they were just ordinary tourists, wandering around the Capitol taking selfies, as tourists are wont to do.

It was gaslighting of the purest order. We were all supposed to believe Clyde's version of events rather than what we had all seen with our own eyes on that grim day. This revolution attempt had been televised, live. So the very idea that it was a bunch of "tourists" was just pathetic from the get-go. Clyde was (rightfully) mocked for his attempt at whitewashing everyone's memories.

And now, after being given unfettered access to the January 6th video evidence, Tucker Carlson's big revelation is to essentially replay scenes just like the one Clyde referenced in Statuary Hall, where violence and mayhem were not currently taking place. Call it the "Nothing to see here, folks..." defense.

If this weren't such a serious and dangerous subject, I would call such an attempt "laughable." Because who, after all, is Tucker trying to convince? The universe of Americans who never saw any footage from that day (either at the time or since) has got to be a pretty small one by now. Everyone else has seen the other footage from that day -- of violent attacks on police forces, of every weapon the mob either could grab or had brought along with them being used against the cops, and of chants to hang the vice president of the United States -- and knows full well this wasn't a tour group who had somehow gotten away from their tour guide.

But this is all poor Tucker's got. A rehash of a bit of gaslighting that wasn't particularly believable when it was first uttered and has become less so over time. When it was announced that Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy had given Carlson full access to over 40,000 hours of footage, many expected Carlson to highlight some footage that would somehow be a springboard for the crazier of the conspiracy theories about that day. There were fears that he would expose security weaknesses at the Capitol, which would be a roadmap for the next attempt at violently seizing the seat of power in Washington. Nobody really knew what to expect, and because McCarthy had only given Carlson this extraordinary access (so far he has refused to give any other media outlet the same access), it might have been hard to put anything Carlson showed into the proper context.

But all he's got is: "Look...see?... they were just tourists"? Seriously?

Maybe this is just a very weak prelude to the expected deep dive into the rabbit holes of conspiracy. After all, 40,000 hours is an enormous amount of footage. If you started playing it from the beginning and let it run 24 hours a day, it would take over four and a half years to display it all. If one person sat watching for eight hours a day, every single day (with no time off and no weekends), they could sit through the whole thing in over 13 and a half years. Even if you put a team of 100 people together and let them work standard 40-hour weeks, it would still take all of them 10 full weeks to get through it. For each of those 100 people, it'd be the equivalent of bingeing 400 episodes of their favorite hour-long television show. That's what the number 40,000 actually means.

Carlson and his team sifted through all the footage (whatever of it they actually watched) with a clear purpose in mind: to come up with a counternarrative to the reality of what happened that day, which was shown in brutal fashion both live when it happened and in more detail during the public hearings of the House Select Committee on January 6th. That is the reality Carlson set out to somehow explain away or undermine in any way possible.

And his presentation is nothing more than an admission that he just couldn't do it. There just wasn't anything there that was in any way new or explosive or revelatory. The facts are the facts, and the video doesn't lie. So he sheepishly tried to prove Representative Clyde's nonsensical gaslighting instead of showing anything new. Which was more pathetic in its second iteration as it was in its first.

Lest you think I am being too partisan in that opinion, here is some of what some prominent Republicans had to say about Carlson's wet firecracker:

"I think it's bullshit," Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters Tuesday when asked about Carlson's portrayal of the events as mostly peaceful. "When you see police officers assaulted, all of that... if you were just a tourist, you should've probably lined up at the visitors' center and came in on an orderly basis."

"I was there on Jan. 6. I saw how violent it was," Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) added.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said Jan. 6 "was clearly more than a peaceful protest of some rowdy boy scouts," while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he wasn't interested in "whitewashing" the events.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) erred by handing over the surveillance footage only to Carlson.

"It's really sad to see Tucker Carlson go off the rails like that. The American people saw what happened on Jan. 6. They've seen the people who got injured. They saw the damage to the building. You can't hide the truth by selectively picking a few minutes out of tapes. It's so absurd, it's nonsense," Romney said.

Then again, these were people who were inside the Capitol as it was besieged and invaded by a violent insurrectionist mob. Carlson, obviously, wasn't present that day. Carlson didn't have to flee for his life from a crowd chanting: "Hang Mike Pence!" in the hallways as they approached. Which leaves him and his target audience free to believe whatever fantastical fairy tales they wish about January 6th. Hey, it's a free country and all, right?

As for the rest of us -- those who actually live in reality -- Carlson's "big reveal" was nothing short of pathetic. Carlson has answered the question: "Is this all you got?" with a sad admission of: "Sorry folks... I got nothin'."

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant