Tucker Carlson to launch ‘new version’ of show on Twitter after Fox News dismissal

Controversial right-wing broadcaster Tucker Carlson has announced plans to revive his show on Twitter after abruptly leaving Fox News last month.

Just days after settling a multi-million-dollar defamation lawsuit, Fox News confirmed on 24 April that Carlson had left the TV station.

Carlson has been relatively quiet ever since, posting one video to Twitter on 26 April where he talked about what he’s realised after stepping “outside the noise” and how “stupid” he finds most debates on television.

He then posted another video on Tuesday (9 May), revealing that he would be reviving Tucker Carlson Tonight on Twitter “soon”.

Carlson emphasised his idea of free speech, describing it as “the fundamental prerequisite for democracy, that’s why it’s enshrined in the first of our [US] constitutional amendments”, and adding that he’d chosen to take his show to Twitter because it’s “not a partisan” site and “the only one” that allowed free speech.

He claimed the social media platform “has long-served as the place where our national conversation incubates and develops”.

The right-wing commentator also said he had struggled to work in a system where there were limitations on what could be reported, claiming it meant audiences were being “manipulated” and were consuming “a lie of the stealthiest and most insidious kind”.

Giving an example, he said: “If I tell you a man has been unjustly arrested for armed robbery, that is not strictly speaking a lie, he may have been framed at this point… but if I don’t mention the fact that the same man has been arrested for the same crimes six times before, am I really informing you?

“No, I’m not. I’m misleading you.”

Carlson did not mention that not reporting previous crimes is a practice to ensure a fair trial for the accused.

Carlson claimed that there were always limits, but “if you bump up against those limits often enough, you will be fired for it”.

He added that rules defining what could be said were “filthy [and] utterly corrupting”.

Carlson’s not the first right-wing pundit to move his show to Twitter since Elon Musk bought the platform in 2022.

Anti-trans activist Matt Walsh announced in April that he’d be moving his podcast to the platform because he kept getting demonetised on YouTube for misgendering trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

In response to Carlson’s shift to Twitter, Walsh said it made him feel “very good” about his own decision. “This will become a major movement now… this is the free-speech platform”.

In late April, Twitter’s co-founder and former chief executive, Jack Dorsey, was reported by CNBC as saying the sale of the platform to Elon Musk in 2022 “all went south” and he did not think the space and tech entrepreneur was right person to be leading the company.