Tucker Carlson has officially made his return since his departure from Fox News, and his first show back has garnered over 80 million views in under 24 hours.
Last night, Carlson unveiled his new show, Tucker on Twitter, with many highlighting that the popularity of this ten-minute segment highlights the newfound power of independent media on Twitter.
Touching on topics such as the explosion of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine, to an Airforce whistleblower stating that the U.S. government has “alien” aircraft, Carlson utilized the segment to report the news and call out the government on their censorship and secrecy. He finished by stating he plans on releasing more episodes as long as Twitter holds true to its promise of free speech.
“As of today we have come to Twitter – we’re told there are no gatekeepers here, if that turns out to be false we’ll leave,” he stated, “but in the meantime, we are grateful to be here, we’ll be back with much more very soon.”
Twitter users highlighted the immense success of Carlson’s first show and highlighted what this means for independent creators on the platform.
“Tucker Carlson is the most successful host in the history of cable news. Even in his “stripped-down” Twitter form, he attracted an audience almost no corporate media employee could get close to,” Glenn Greenwald tweeted.
Last week, The Daily Wire also launched its What is a Woman? documentary on Twitter, which amassed almost 180 million views. Initially, Daily Wire’s CEO announced that Twitter pulled out of a deal to launch the documentary and would label it as “hate speech.” However, once this news caught the attention of Elon Musk, he not only condemned the action as a “mistake” but personally shared the documentary with his 142.5 million followers.
“Every parent should watch this,” Musk tweeted.
With Twitter 2.0 attracting a host of new content creators, and with the new capability of creators to upload long-form content, many are calling this a deathblow to the traditional mainstream media, which held a monopoly on the information market for decades.
With Carlson back in the news cycle, censorship no longer ruling Twitter, and Elon Musk at the forefront of championing free speech, it feels like a new era for truth and journalism is just getting started.
