Tucker Carlson announces he will launch his own show on Twitter.

Media personality, Tucker Carlson.

 The former host of Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News has announced that he will be launching a talk show of sorts from his Twitter account. Since the firing of the veteran broadcaster from Fox News on April 21, there has been speculation as to his next move. 

In a video posted on his Twitter feed, Carlson said he would be relaunching his show on the social media platform. In the three-minute video Tucker rebuked the mainstream media for lying to the public. He told his viewers: "You are being manipulated." 

Elon Musk weighed on this move by Carlson stating that he hoped others would follow suit. 
"On this platform, unlike the one-way street of broadcast, people are able to interact, critique and refute whatever he or anyone may say," Musk tweeted on Tuesday. He added "we have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever. Tucker is subject to the same rules & rewards of all content creators."

"I hope that many others, particularly from the left, also choose to be content creators on this platform," Musk said in the tweet.

Carlson’s move to Twitter comes as former President Donald Trump is running for election again in 2024. In the wake of President Joe Biden’s triumph over Trump in 2020, both media outlets and social media platforms are jostling to cover the claims and counter claims that will no doubt come from the cut and thrust of American politics in an upcoming election cycle.

In April Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle Dominion’s defamation lawsuit which claimed that the network and its hosts spread false information about the election. Fox faces a similar lawsuit with voting machine tech company Smartmatic USA.

Carlson has not publicly addressed his firing from the news network, although he broke his silence days after he was fired to also post a video on his Twitter feed. "When you take a little time off, you realize how unbelievably stupid the debates you see on television are, they’re completely irrelevant,” he said during his April 26 video.

Since then, various media reports have emerged showing text messages from Carlson, including a racist remark about how “white men” fight, have sealed his fate at Fox. The texts were unearthed during the discovery process in the Dominion defamation case.

In recent days, unredacted portions of evidence from the Dominion lawsuit have come out in media reports, which have also revealed that Carlson was pushing the network to let him create his own platform. Carlson was reportedly in a contract dispute with Fox, which is said to last through 2025, and was said to have had discussions with Musk.