Tucker Carlson says ‘child abuse teeters on the edge of acceptability’
Tucker Carlson releases second Twitter show saying ‘child abuse teeters on the edge of acceptability’ – as more than 40 million people tune in
- Tucker Carlson’s second Twitter show has racked up tens of millions of views in a matter of hours
- In the 13-minute monologue posted Thursday night, Carlson urged Americans to “hold on to your taboos like your life depends on it.”
- The success of his first two Twitter shows will likely reassure Carlson that choosing Twitter as the platform for his post-Fox career was the right decision.
Tucker Carlson’s second Twitter show has racked up tens of millions of views within hours — another sign that his departure from Fox News has done nothing to affect his massive clout.
In the 13-minute monologue posted Thursday night, Carlson urged Americans to “hold on to your taboos as if your life depended on it” and made the inflammatory suggestion that white supremacy is an “out of fashion opinion.” .
Sixteen hours later, about 40 million people had seen the post and it had been retweeted and liked more than 500,000 times in total.
The huge numbers will likely reassure Carlson that choosing Elon Musk’s Twitter as the platform for his post-Fox career was the right decision. By comparison, his show “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, the most watched program on the cable news show, averaged 3.1 million viewers per night.
But some commentators have said the move to a platform where he’s essentially a solo operator with little oversight has pushed him further into the realm of conspiracy theories.
Tucker Carlson’s second Twitter show racked up tens of millions of views within hours — another sign his departure from Fox News has done nothing to affect his massive clout
Carlson cited a Wall Street Journal study showing how the popular social media site Instagram helped connect and promote a network of pedophile accounts
He focused the final show on “taboos,” claiming that “the greatest taboo of them all teeters on the edge of acceptability: child abuse.”
Carlson cited a Wall Street Journal study published two days ago showing how the popular social media site Instagram helped connect and promote a network of pedophile accounts, allowing people to search for explicit hashtags.
Carlson then made a series of comments on issues ranging from Kyle Rittenhouse’s shooting during the 2020 BLM riots to Joe Biden’s claim that white supremacy is “the most dangerous terrorist threat” to America.
He suggested that modern America was now less critical of child abuse and that in the “old system … child abuse was a crime, having old-fashioned opinions was not.”
Carlson’s first episode, which criticized the West’s support for Ukraine and accused news outlets of ignoring a whistleblower’s claims that “UFOs are real,” had already been viewed 110.4 million times as of Friday.
The clip was viewed 80 million times in less than 24 hours, to the cheers of conservative commentators who claimed it “broke the media matrix.”
Twitter’s stats measure the number of times a tweet has been “seen,” so the total number of people who actually viewed the video is likely lower.
Fox News fired Carlson in April, and his debut monologue accused media organizations like his former employer of keeping people in the dark in a deliberate effort to keep them submissive.
He said he hopes his show will be “the shortwave radio under the covers.”
Carlson’s videos contain a watermark that features Tucker on Twitter. Twitter owner Elon Musk has said it would be “great to have shows from all parts of the political spectrum on this platform”.
Tucker Carlson was the most-watched man on cable news until his April shock
Carlson and his wife Susan Andrews are seen shortly after his firing from Fox in late April
“Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, cable’s most-watched newscast, averaged 3.1 million viewers per weeknight in the weeks leading up to his shock layoff.
Fox’s lost hour of 8 p.m. has since lost nearly half of its viewers, and other primetime shows have suffered significant ratings losses as well.
Carlson took his show to Twitter in a surprising fashion just weeks after his abrupt termination by Fox in April.
Carlson’s videos contain a watermark that features Tucker on Twitter. Twitter owner Elon Musk has said it would be “great to have shows from all parts of the political spectrum on this platform”.
Fox’s lost hour of 8 p.m. has since lost nearly half of its viewers, and other primetime shows have suffered significant ratings losses as well.
Carlson took his show to Twitter in a surprising fashion just weeks after his abrupt termination by Fox in April.