[ad_1]
Tucker Carlson speaks during the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Festival on August 7, 2021 in Esztergom, Hungary.
Janus Kummer | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Tucker Carlson is back – on Twitter.
The right-wing TV personality said in a video on his Twitter feed Tuesday that he is relaunching his show on the social media platform, which is owned by Elon Musk. Carlson was abruptly fired from his prime-time position at Fox News weeks earlier, shortly after the network paid Dominion Voting Systems a settlement in its defamation lawsuit.
In a three-minute video, Carlson — who has worked for CNN, MSNBC and Fox News — slammed the mainstream media for allegedly lying to the public. “You are being manipulated,” he told viewers. Carlson also said that Twitter is not partisan.
“Amazingly, as of tonight, there aren’t many platforms that allow freedom of expression anymore. The last big platform left in the world, the only one, is Twitter, which is where we are now,” Carlson said in a video on Tuesday. “Twitter has long served as a place where our national conversation is embraced and developed. Twitter is not a partisan site, everyone is allowed here, and we think that’s a good thing.”
A Fox representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Twitter spokesperson responded with an emoji when asked for comment on Tuesday.
Carlson’s shift to Twitter comes as former President Donald Trump faces re-election in 2024. In the wake of President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020, both the media and social media platforms have been grappling with false allegations circulating around the most recent. election.
Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion that the network and its hosts made false claims about the election. Fox faces a similar lawsuit with voting technology company Smartmatic USA.
Carlson has not publicly addressed his firing from Fox News, though he broke his silence days after he was fired from the network, also in a video posted to his Twitter feed. “When you take a little vacation, you realize how incredibly stupid the debates you see on TV are, they are completely irrelevant,” he said during the video he posted on April 26.
Since then, various media reports have surfaced saying that text messages from Carlson, including a racist remark about how “white men” fight, sealed his fate at Fox. The texts were discovered during the discovery process in the Dominion defamation case.
In recent days, unredacted pieces of evidence from the Dominion lawsuit have surfaced in media reports, which also said that Carlson was pressing the network to allow him to find his own platform. Carlson was It is said in A contract dispute with Fox, which is said to run through 2025, has reportedly been in discussions with Musk.
Carlson’s final show to air on Fox on Friday, April 21, Fox said in a statement the following Monday: “FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to separate. We thank him for his service to the network as host and prior to this as contributor.”
In his final week on Fox News, Carlson hosted Musk on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
During the interview, which was broadcast over two nights, Carlson asked Musk if he thought Twitter would greatly influence future elections as it did for Trump. “I think she’s going to play an important role in the election, not just locally but internationally,” Musk told Carlson.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros.’s CNN will reside. Discovery live interview with Trump. And the network has vowed to hold Trump accountable, with CEO David Zaslav saying that, as the Republican frontrunner, Trump should be on the air.
– CNBC’s Laura Kolodny contributed to this article.
[ad_2]
