In his second message on Twitter since Fox News dumped him last month, Tucker Carlson announced that he would take the show to Twitter.
Speaking two days ago on the social-media platform, Carlson said the leftist media are a lie-and-propaganda machine that runs 24-7-365. They not only restrict free speech, but also are helping crush it by circumscribing debate to a fixed narrative. Commentary contrary to that narrative is not allowed, and so free speech is dying.
The “right-wing extremist,” as CNN’s left-wing media reporter Oliver Darcy called Carlson, didn’t directly mention his departure from Fox, but instead alluded to it. Speak out against the leftist media megaphone, he said, and you’ll be fired.
The Message
Carlson’s late-afternoon message was blunt: the leftist media lie … day after day.
“You often hear people say the news is full of lies,” Carlson began. “But most of the time that’s not exactly right.”
Though the material that appears, say, in The New York Times could pass media “fact checks,” and lawyers would “sign off on it,” that doesn’t make it true. Because “at the most basic level, the news you consume is a lie, a lie of the stealthiest and most insidious kind,” he continued:
Facts have been withheld on purpose, along with proportion and perspective. You are being manipulated. How does that work? Let’s see. If I tell you that a man has been unjustly arrested for armed robbery, that is not, strictly speaking, a lie. He may have been framed. At this point, there’s been no trial, so no one could really say. But if I don’t mention the fact that the same man has been arrested for the same crime six times before, am I really informing you? No I’m not. I’m misleading you.
And that, Carlson said, is what the media do “every day of the week, every week of the year.”
Apropos of his departure from Fox, Carlson said all journalists know “there are always limits, and you know that if you bump up against those limits often enough, you will be fired for it”:
That’s not a guess. It’s guaranteed. Every person who works in English language media understands that. The rule of what you can’t say defines everything. It’s filthy really, and it’s utterly corrupting. You can’t have a free society if people aren’t allowed to say what they think is true. Speech is the fundamental prerequisite for democracy. That’s why it’s enshrined in the first of our constitutional amendments.
Thus, according to Carlson, because leftist information managers are lying and restricting free speech, only one serious platform to tell the truth remains: Twitter, “where our national conversation incubates and develops.”
Though Twitter is nonpartisan, he continued, “the news that you see analyzed on Twitter comes from media organizations that are themselves thinly disguised propaganda outlets” and “the gatekeepers are still in charge.”
Thus will the hard-hitting content he delivered to Fox viewers soon move to the platform.
Musk: No Deal Signed
Twitter owner Elon Musk quickly announced that the platform had not signed a deal with Carlson.
“On this platform, unlike the one-way street of broadcast, people are able to interact, critique and refute whatever is said,” Musk wrote. Still, “we have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever. Tucker is subject to the same rules & rewards of all content creators.”
Musk also said he wants leftists to create content for the platform.
For his part, Darcy tried to explain why Carlson was so popular, and powerful, within the GOP.
“Aside from former President Donald Trump, Carlson was arguably the most powerful voice inside the Republican Party, with lawmakers fearing his wrath and appearing on his program in a symbolic bow to his feet,” the weird-looking left-wing extremist wrote:
Carlson was able to achieve that influence by posting high ratings. But his monster viewership numbers were earned through the trafficking of anti-immigrant rhetoric, false conspiracy theories, and the promotion of white nationalist talking points.
First Video Message After Leaving Fox
Darcy didn’t detail those “false conspiracy theories” or “white nationalist talking points,” but, generally speaking, they describe anything Darcy and his hate-Carlson leftist colleagues don’t like.
That would include Carlson’s first video message after he left Fox.
Carlson called the political debates on television “unbelievably stupid” and “completely irrelevant.”
“They mean nothing,” he said:
The undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all. War. Civil liberties. Emerging science. Demographic change. Corporate power. Natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues? It’s been a long time. Debates like that are not permitted in American media. Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it. Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one-party state.
That talk riffed off his speech at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th Anniversary gala. Noting that American political debates about such things as “transgenderism” are “irrational,” he repeatedly urged revelers to pray for the country’s future. That speech, Vanity Fair reported, provoked 92-year-old Fox chieftain Rupert Murdoch to order Carlson fired.
However, other reports claim Fox jettisoned Carlson because of a sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit and his commentary on the mostly peaceful protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
