Tucker Carlson announced on Tuesday afternoon that he would soon launch a new version of his former Fox News show with Twitter, a move that arrived in the aftermath of his removal from the media outlet last month.
“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,” Carlson said in a video on Twitter, alluding to his recently-ended six-year tenure on Fox News.
In the video introducing the upcoming show, Carlson rehashed common right-wing beliefs about the media, describing them as “thinly disguised propaganda outlets”. He also asserted people consume news that is “a lie of the stealthiest and most insidious kind”.
He added: “Facts have been withheld on purpose, proportion, and perspective. You are being manipulated.”
His partnership with Twitter for his show was intentional, as he claimed that Twitter is the last big platform left in the world that allows free speech, the “fundamental prerequisite to democracy”.
Carlson’s announcement follows a month after he was fired by Fox News, a surprising move prompted by “highly offensive” text messages where Carlson wrote to one of his producers that the January 6 attack on the Capitol was “not how white men fight”.
Sources told Axios on Sunday that Carlson was “preparing for war” with Fox News and wanted out of his contract to start his own media outlet or work elsewhere. In his video announcing the Twitter show, Carlson appeared to take a dig at his former employer, alluding to what ignited the conservative channel’s decision to fire him.
“The best you can hope for in the news business at this point is the freedom to tell the fullest truth that you can,” he said. “But 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.”
He continued: “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.”
Throughout his six years at Fox News, Carlson frequently shared inflammatory rhetoric and racist talking points while on air, including his repeated promotion of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. Last month, Carlson went on a racist tirade against a Black Tennessee state lawmaker, suggesting he spoke like a “sharecropper”.
Carlson was removed from Fox News shortly after the company settled the massive defamation lawsuit against it by Dominion Voting Systems related to Fox’s claims that the electronic voting company’s machines were rigged against Trump in the 2020 presidential election.