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Last spring, it seemed like Tucker Carlson might have reached the end of his rage. Way through American media and politics.
Fox News canceled his top-rated show, depriving Mr. Carlson of his nightly platform in prime time. But it kept him under a contract worth more than $15 million a year, which prevented him from taking a job with a rival.
Under legacy media’s old rules, Mr. Carlson would have been off the air and out of sight until the end of the 2024 election, when his contract expires. But Mr. Carlson is not a typical television star. And what was once normal in their industry has become increasingly archaic, broken by the new rules – or lack thereof – of the fragmented online media world.
In an exclusive interview with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin — released Thursday on the social network Came back. ,
The two-hour interview exposed him to sharp criticism from an American audience, as many congressional Republicans had worked to block a vital lifeline of US military aid to Ukraine.
It also accomplished Mr. Carlson’s goal of getting back into the spotlight. For the first time since his ouster from Fox, his name was once again on the lips of prominent national and international figures, the kind of discussion Mr. Carlson had long sought.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Alex Wagner this week, Hillary Clinton called him “a useful idiot” and Mr. Putin’s “puppy dog.”
Mr Carlson gave Mr Putin the space to pursue unfettered investigations into long-standing and decidedly one-sided complaints about Ukraine’s origins and independence movements. But Mr. Carlson occasionally pressed Mr. Putin, to his apparent irritation, including on why Russia was imprisoning Wall Street Journal reporter Ivan Gershkovich. He challenged Mr. Putin’s claim that Mr. Gershkovich was a Were spies.
It remains to be seen whether the interview elevates Mr. Carlson’s standing in the long term.
The interview with Mr Putin will serve as a kind of advertisement for his streaming site, which he set up in December and costs subscribers $9 a month. The Tucker Carlson Network is an attempt to replicate the business model of other conservative personalities like Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro, who have built stand-alone digital platforms outside of traditional media. Mr. Carlson is working with a company called Red Seat Ventures to handle ad sales on the new platform, which counts Ms. Kelly, Bari Weiss and Nancy Grace among its clients.
However, so far, Mr. Carlson’s self-produced interviews on
His declining power appears to be at least part of the reason why Fox did not make more efforts to stop his new endeavor, even though Fox said it violated the terms of his contract. (Mr. Carlson’s lawyers have argued that Fox basically breached his contract, and that his online show falls within his free speech rights.)
If Fox pursues a case against Mr. Carlson, it could give him the opportunity to claim that his former “corporate media” overlords, as he likes to call them, were trying to censor him. It’s the kind of argument that plays out among Mr. Carlson’s fan base, which resembles a political movement in itself, giving him an advantage over some other television stars.
It was this leverage that helped Mr. Carlson win over former President Donald J. Trump during his time at Fox News. It had been such a boon for Mr Trump – and Mr Putin.
Mr Carlson was the most prominent promoter of pro-Russian arguments on the network, including his claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a dictator who is being used by the West to weaken Russia – a view he echoed with Mr Putin. Reflected again in his interview with.
But his promotional style also took him to the limits of cable television.
His involvement in the defamation suit against Fox, which Dominion Voting Systems settled for $787 million – and the pre-trial discovery of a text by Mr. Carlson expressing inflammatory views about violence and race – have drawn criticism from his corporate bosses, Lachlan and Influenced Rupert Murdoch in his decision. Cut his show.
X boss Elon Musk moved quickly to make Mr. Carlson the first host of a long-form video show on the platform.
Mr Musk completed his purchase of “Free speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy,” Mr Musk explained to Mr Carlson, who praised him for “restoring free speech on the Internet”.
In X, Mr. Musk can offer Mr. Carlson a freer level of speech, partly because Internet platforms like his have greater legal protection from defamation suits like the one Dominion brought against Fox. And Mr Musk has shown no concern about content that could alienate advertisers. (According to internal documents obtained by The New York Times,
Mr. Carlson ultimately broke Murdoch’s limits on what he could allow on his network. That doesn’t come close to the threshold for Mr Musk, who reinstated thousands of previously vanished accounts amid a rise in racist and anti-Semitic messages on the social network, as well as those promoting health and election misinformation. On Thursday, Mr Musk, the most followed user on X, shared Mr Putin’s interview with his followers.
Mr Carlson’s show has included guests such as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has violated content moderation policies on several social media platforms, including Twitter, which was known as Policies ended. ,
Other guests included independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, each of whom received a supportive welcome from Mr. Musk on the X.
That shared vision has at times extended to Ukraine and Russia. Mr Musk has angered Ukrainians by suggesting they could negotiate peace, which they equate with allowing Mr Putin to keep Ukrainian territory he took through bloody and illegal force.
And although Mr Musk has allowed Ukraine to use its Starlink satellite system for battlefield communications, he has acknowledged blocking its use for a planned attack against Russia in the Black Sea last year. Mr Putin, in turn, praised Mr Musk as a “brilliant businessman”.
Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, had similar warm words for Mr. Carlson this week, saying that Mr. Putin granted him an interview — which Mr. Carlson had been seeking since his Fox days — because of Mr. Carlson’s “position are the opposite of “traditional, Anglo-Saxon media.”
Mr Peskov dismissed Mr Carlson’s false suggestion that he was the first Western media figure to interview Mr Putin since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago because journalists had not bothered to ask. Several Western outlets, including The Times, have made this request.
But Mr. Peskov agreed with Mr. Carlson that traditional media “cannot even claim to make efforts to appear impartial.”
Russia defines impartiality as adhering to its official line, with deviations risking prison sentences. This flies in the face of traditional journalistic standards – standards that Mr. Carlson doesn’t have to worry about at X.
It looks like the interview will attract a large audience. The test will be whether this leads to more subscriptions and interest in his show – and if not, how Mr. Carlson will try to position himself for his next performance.
kate conger Contributed to the reporting.
