Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the Internet. Former Fox News Senior White Nationalist, Tucker Carlson, has announced that he will be launching a new “show” on twitter. He doesn’t provide any details of how he will accomplish that, or what a Twitter show would look like, but he’s got an ego just big enough to believe that this will thrust him back into the media spotlight. He’s wrong.
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Carlson’s proposed Twitter show is his attempt to remain relevant after being banished from his perch on cable news. However, he might want to check with Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck to see if there is life after Fox for hostile purveyors of dishonest, right-wing propaganda. Like them, he would become a footnote in the cyber world hollering into the void to a diminished audience of drooling deplorables.
RELATED: A Post-Mortem on Tucker Carlson Following His Unusually Abrupt Departure From Fox News
Undaunted, Carlson is marching ahead with his arrogant aspirations. He is reported to be pursuing affiliations with Donald Trump and Elon Musk to pump up his paltry prospects. And to that end, Carlson announced that he will take his canceled TV tantrums to Twitter. [NOTE: Musk claims that “We have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever.”] In the introductory video (posted below), Carlson said that…
“You often hear people say the news is full of lies, but that’s not exactly right. Much of what you see on television or read in the New York Times is, in fact, true in the literal sense.”
Okay. So Carlson is defending the truthfulness of most of what you see and read in the news. An interesting position from someone who has been proven to have lied brazenly and literally declared that “misinformation can be true.” However, Carlson followed that up immediately by saying that while most news reports would pass fact checks, “that doesn’t make it true. It’s not true.” According to Carlson, the news is both truthful and “At the most basic level, the news you consume is a lie.” He really needs to make up his mangled mess of a mind.
Carlson says that the media’s lies are the result of withholding “perspective.” And that, as a result, “You are being manipulated.” But perspective, by definition, is opinion. It is an addendum to factual reporting that may or may not be factual. It is opinion that is most likely to be the tool of manipulation. And it is opinion that is the core of what Carlson produces. It is Carlson who is, and always has been, manipulating you.
So after asserting that the media tells the truth, except for when it lies and/or manipulates you, Carlson proceeds to insist that the media is lying virtually all the time…
“That’s what the news media are doing. In every story that matters, every day of the week, every week of the year? What’s it like to work in a system like that? After more than 30 years in the middle of it, we could tell you stories.”
Indeed, Carlson could tell us “stories,” which, ironically, is a synonym for lies. He is effectively confessing that he has lied to his audience for 30 years. And given that confession, why should he change now? So he goes on to complain that there are “limits” to freedom of speech in the media, and that “if you bump up against those limits often enough you will be fired for it.” Here Carlson is obliquely referencing his firing from Fox News without saying so explicitly. And he offers no evidence that his firing had anything to do with the limits he is alleging. To the contrary, he was terminated for reasons that had to do with his own dishonesty and hostility toward his audience, colleagues, and bosses. Carlson is manipulating you.
Carlson continues by implying that his messy separation from Fox News resulted from some sort of censorship that was imposed upon him. “You can’t have a free society,” he warned, “if people aren’t allowed to say what they think is true.” First of all, what you “think is true” is not necessarily the same as what is actually true. Once again, Carlson is confusing opinion with facts. Secondly, he had ample opportunity to say what he thought was true. In fact, that’s what got him fired. Carlson is manipulating you.
Finally, Carlson concludes with a blisteringly preposterous assertion about the state of free speech in America today:
“Amazingly, as of tonight, there aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech. The last big one remaining in the world, the only one, is Twitter [and that] Twitter is not a partisan site”
What the holy f**k? Can Carlson really believe that Twitter is the only platform in the world that allows free speech? And that it is not partisan? Under the horrifically biased mismanagement of Elon Musk, Twitter has become the platform of choice for racists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and a broad array of ultra right-wing conspiracy theorists. But before you claim that that is proof that it respects free speech, consider that other more reasonable and decent voices are suppressed, shadow-banned, and tagged with so-called “community notes” that disparage those views.
Despite Carlson’s ludicrous pronouncements of Twitter’s non-partisan free for all, he closes by contradicting himself and criticizing Twitter as a place where “for the most part, the news… comes from media organizations that are themselves thinly disguised propaganda outlets. [i.e. Fox News] The result may feel like a debate, but actually, the gatekeepers are still in charge.” So Twitter doesn’t practice free speech and isn’t non-partisan after all? Carlson is manipulating you.
Carlson then calls that “a bad system,” and says that he’s “sick of it.” But then abruptly flips gears to gleefully announce that he is “bringing a new version of the show we’ve been doing for the last six and a half years to Twitter.” The bad system that he is sick of?
Carlson’s proposed Twitter show could come at great cost to him. He would likely be breaching contractual agreements with Fox News. Dylan Byers of Puck News reports that “He will forgo at least $25 million owed to him by Fox Corp. in order to break non-compete clause.” And in anticipation of a bloody battle with Fox, Axios reports that Carlson has preemptively “accused [Fox News] Tuesday of fraud and breach of contract — and made a host of document demands that could precede legal action.” Although Fox has already lobbed some bombs of their own…
SEE THIS: Fox News ‘Demands’ that Media Matters Stop Publishing Leaked Videos of Tucker Carlson
The Fox News/Tucker Carlson divorce has hurt both of them. Carlson will lose money and access to Fox’s millions of viewers. And Fox is already bleeding those viewers. In the end, Carlson is just validating why his own Fox News lawyers defended him in a defamation lawsuit by arguing that “no reasonable person” would believe anything he said. Carlson is most definitely, deliberately, and dreadfully manipulating you.
RELATED: Fox News Court Ruling: No ‘Reasonable Viewer’ Takes Tucker Carlson Seriously
We’re back. pic.twitter.com/sG5t9gr60O
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 9, 2023
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