Tucker Carlson Says He's Bringing His Show to Twitter

UPDATE May 9, 2023 4:50 PM CDT

Tucker Carlson has found a new home after being fired by Fox News. Carlson announced in a tweet on Tuesday that he's going to relaunch his show on Twitter, Politico reports. "Starting soon, we’ll be bringing a new version of the show we’ve been doing for the last six and a half years to Twitter," he said. "We’ll bring some other things too, which we’ll tell you about. But for now, we’re just grateful to be here." Carlson, who interviewed Twitter CEO Elon Musk days before parting ways with Fox, said there are "not that many platforms left that allow free speech," the BBC reports. " You can't have a free society if people aren't allowed to say what they think is true," he said.

May 8, 2023 8:36 AM CDT

Tucker Carlson is off the air at Fox, and his contract stipulates that he can't go anywhere else until January 2025, reports the New York Times. As a result, Carlson is trying to work out an exit deal that would allow him to return to a public forum—either one of his own making or with a rival network—in plenty of time to comment on the 2024 election.

• A threat: Amid these talks, Axios reports that Carlson's team is preparing to play hard ball against Fox, possibly by getting his many conservative allies to attack the network. "The idea that anyone is going to silence Tucker and prevent him from speaking to his audience is beyond preposterous," attorney Bryan Freedman tells Mike Allen. (Freedman is the same high-powered attorney hired by ousted CNN anchor Don Lemon.)

• Options: Axios also reports that conservative outlets Rumble and Newsmax are offering Carlson lucrative deals, even more than he made at Fox, and it adds this interesting nugget: Carlson also has spoken to none other than Elon Musk about a possible partnership. The anchor has proved his post-Fox drawing power with a video that has more than 24 million views.
• Pay or play: The sticking point in negotiations is that Carlson has what's known as a "pay or play" clause that bars him from working for a rival for as long as he's under contract, per the Times. “There are circumstances where pay-or-play provisions can be challenged, but networks and studios certainly view them as being relatively ironclad," explains an entertainment lawyer.
• Nastiness: Both Carlson and Fox appear to have enough inside information on the other to make a deal allowing him to go elsewhere possible—or to make for extremely nasty public fallout. Carlson's controversial texts continue to leak, though Fox insists it is not the leaker. And the network has demanded that longtime foe Media Matters take down leaked behind-the-scenes videos from his show, per CNN.
• Backfiring? Rolling Stone is out with a report suggesting that Carlson doomed himself at Fox with his efforts to get the network's PR chief, Irena Briganti, fired. The two repeatedly clashed, and Carlson apparently thought he had enough clout to win, but his "failed attempt to oust Briganti helped erode his goodwill among the Fox News executive class."

(More Tucker Carlson stories.)