WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 29: Fox News host Tucker Carlson discusses 'Populism and the Right' during the National Review Institute's Ideas Summit at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel March 29, 2019 in Washington, DC. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
There is happiness, and some gloating, among GOP lawmakers and conservative media commentators that Tucker Carlson, recently fired by Fox News, is back and will soon launch a show on a media platform that not long ago was the bane of many of the same people now celebrating the news.
Carlson’s show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” on Fox News had the second most viewers of all cable TV shows with more than 3 million viewers.
In a video posted on Twitter, Carlson announced on May 9 that he is sidestepping establishment media and is preparing to bring his commentary and insight to a show that will be broadcast on the social media and networking site.
Twitter is owned by tech mogul, Elon Musk, among the richest people on Earth.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 3, 2023. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Carlson did not say when the program will begin, how long an episode will be, or if he and Musk had worked on or completed an agreement for the show.
The anchor teased the new format will be like “the show we’ve been doing for the last six-and-a-half years.”
“We bring some other things, too, which we will tell you about. But for now, we’re just grateful to be here,” he added. “Free speech is the main right you have. Without it, you have no others.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) quickly retweeted the Carlson video on her Twitter feed along with the message, “I can’t wait for @TuckerCarlson’s new show on Twitter. The truth will be unstoppable.”
Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News star who now has her own show on YouTube, is a big fan of Carlson.
Since Fox News fired Carlson, Kelly has been proclaiming that he was going to land a major media commenting gig. She has also been unsparing in her attacks on Fox News.
Kelly followed Carlson’s announcement, tweeting: “Tucker flips Fox News the middle finger and takes his show to Twitter and @elonmusk. Right on!”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) listens during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Jan. 25, 2023. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Two Republican senators stopped to talk in the Capitol Building to The Epoch Times about their thoughts on the Carlson news.
“I think it’s great that people are out there, telling him to help get their ideas out,” Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) told The Epoch Times.
Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said to The Epoch Times: “Whatever he’s done in life, he’s been pretty successful at. I am sure that he will be successful.
“My guess is he’s probably taking some time out to get settled in with his family and check in at home, and I’d just encourage him to take care of that part of his life as well.”
Concerns About Media
Media insiders who recently spoke to The Epoch Times said they feel that the recent episode of Fox News firing an all-star in Carlson—despite his massive and dedicated following—is evidence that all of the media, including a cable channel long a favorite of conservatives, has become a servant of a global and highly educated elite.
The insiders said those who run global corporations and large sectors of government, and who push policies that undermine and are at odds with hopes and priorities of Middle America and at least half of the country’s population.
Batya Ungar-Sargon, deputy editor at Newsweek, said that the polarization between those in the middle to lower class who have not gone to college and those making public policy and drafting the narrative of corporate culture is widened and made more intractable by an emerging journalist class.
The new sector of journalists, as Ungar-Sargon explained, work in an industry where there are fewer jobs, yet where there is ample opportunity to make more money than they could in similar positions in the past and qualify to be among the elite—while also having the technology and digital tools readily available to powerfully advance the philosophies of the moneyed, college educated, and well connected.
“The journalist class has become part of the elite and so they see the world through an elite lens,” said Ungar-Sargon.
Ungar-Sargon said that elite journalists don’t have much appetite for entertaining opinions contrary to those they hold.
“If you sort of poke the bear and say things that the elites are not willing to hear, the response is so brutal,” she said. “They really try to run you out of town and run you off the airwaves and make it impossible for you to ever have your opinion again.”
Sharyl Attkisson, formerly with CBS and now working as an independent journalist, speculated that the powers that be cut ties with Tucker Carlson-despite his more than 3 million nightly viewers-to take him “off the stage so that he can’t be effective in 2024” in affecting and guiding voter decisions.
“I think there’s been a trend of the news media making decisions contrary to its own financial interests, and that tells you there’s something else, or somebody else, calling the shots,” Attkisson said.
“If not, then it would simply do the things that were journalistically appropriate and would make money or service viewers.”
Ross Muscato covers the U.S. Congress for The Epoch Times.
