Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Bark louder, little dog.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Not all heroes wear capes.

“But what about the lurkers?”

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: Tucker & Elon, Together At Last

Late Night Open Thread: Tucker & Elon, Together At Last

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Per the Hollywood Reporter, specialists in the dirt behind the hype:

… In a video posted to his Twitter account with the line “we’re back,” Carlson said that he will be bringing “a new version of the show that we have been doing for the past six and a half years to Twitter.”

“We’ll be bringing some other things too, which we will tell you about, but for now we are just grateful to be here,” Carlson added.

Carlson’s website on Tuesday led with the headline “Tucker is back,” with a sign-up so users could get details when they are officially announced. It also included a photo of Carlson — who splits his time between Maine and Florida — wearing a plaid shirt and holding what appears to be a shotgun.

The announcement suggests in no uncertain terms that the Elon Musk-owned social platform will play host to Carlson’s program — or at least a version of it — even as he navigates an exit agreement with Fox News, which is being negotiated by attorney Bryan Freedman.

Musk, who was interviewed by Carlson a few weeks ago on his now-canceled Fox News show, tweeted later in the day that Carlson had “not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever” with Twitter. He explained that the host would benefit from subscriptions and advertising revenue share, which Musk said would be a new feature for the platform. The Twitter CEO added, “I hope that many others, particularly from the left, also choose to be content creators on this platform.”…

I’m a Cynic, of course, but the wording here suggests that the two divas already have different ideas about who gets what from this deal. Keep your splatter shields up, bystanders!

Of course, Dylan Byers will believe anything a media flack feeds him:

Just a couple of True Believers, megaphoning the MAGAt brand…

Reader Interactions

57Comments

  1. 1.

    Jackie

    As my only exposure to Twitter is through y’all, I’m sure I’ll only get the low-lights.

    eta: OMG, I’m finally first!

  2. 2.

    lgerard

    If he wants to go the independent Alex Jones route he needs to come up with a line of testicle sunscreen in order to make it pay off

  3. 3.

    SpaceUnit

    There’s no way this ends up as anything other than two competing egomaniacs destroying one another in an epic shit-fight.

    And I’m okay with that.

  5. 5.

    eclare

    My Staffie bull mix just stopped barking and growling at the front door after thirty minutes.  I am now so jacked up and paranoid I may never get to sleep.

  7. 7.

    ColoradoGuy

    Hoo boy, massive hailstorm just now. Golf ball sized hailstones, and lots of them. Hope TaMara and her critters came through OK.

  8. 8.

    BeautifulPlumage

    I’m all in for the collision of giant assholes & the collateral damage. The various lawsuits and threats of lawsuits adds spice to the event. Need moar popcorn!

  9. 9.

    bjacques

    I’m still on Twitter because, among other things, I expect #NAFO to invoke Article 5 on him in the near future, if they haven’t already.

  10. 10.

    Suzanne

    This is just something I cannot grok. I have zero desire to be famous. It sounds terrible. Being rich sounds great. Tucker is walking away from $25M, which he gets to keep if he only does…. no work. And he’s doing that in order to attempt to stay famous. WTF.

  17. 17.

    Tony Jay

     As Trump’s support gives the finger to his sex-case detractors, we ask, is Biden simply too old to overcome such audacity?

    #FTNYT Pitchbot is on holiday

  18. 18.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Suzanne: Some people are addicted to fame, others aren’t. I’d be happy to be wealthy and anonymous – money may not buy happiness, but it can relieve pain, as I think John Scalzi once said.

  21. 21.

    yellowdog

    Twitter just released new Terms of Service. If I’m reading it right, it says Twitter owns the copyright to everything posted on the site. Can someone tell me if this is 1) Normal TOS verbiage, or, 2) Legal?

  22. 22.

    Tony Jay

    @Suzanne:

    He’s got to be looking towards a Trump-free future for the MAGOP and thinking, “If I can stay famous enough to give these morons a messiah to follow, I might just end up as the Republican Jesus to Trump’s John the Baptist.”

    Which is insane and awful, but it’s the MAGOP Base we’re talking about here. Insane and awful, with a side order of famous and independently wealthy, is what gets their turtles snapping.

  24. 24.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @yellowdog:

    1) No, but it’s been done before.  People ignore it unless the site starts actually using their stuff, at which point there’s a rebellion.

    2). Questionable, but the victims never have the money to take it to court.

  25. 25.

    Jay

    Whether it’s liberal Tweeters calling themselves social justice warriors or conservative mass shooters calling themselves members of the right-wing dearth squad, both sides have adopted a frighteningly militaristic lingo.— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) May 8, 2023

  26. 26.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Tony Jay:

    If I can stay famous enough to give these morons a messiah to follow

    If Carlson doesn’t have a TV show for any serious length of time, he’s done.  Gone.  Forgotten and never to return.  His fans will move on to the next thing and not look back.  It’s possible only Fox is a big enough forum to keep him holding any kind of fan base, but he’s guaranteed looking at permanent irrelevance if he doesn’t find something fast.

  29. 29.

    JaySinWA

    I just read this Bulwark piece by Wil Saleten specialto.thebulwark.com/p/the-corruption-of-lindsey-graham

    It’s more than a case study of Lindsey, it tries to use his history as an example of the corruption of the bulk of the Republican party.

    It is definitely a long read. It does present a view into motivations driving R’s to support T no matter what he says or does.

    It provides a lot of detail into Lindsey’s descent into full-throated support.

  30. 30.

    Tony Jay

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    This is true enough. He needs to get out from under his Fox Non-Compete and back to being projected onto the walls of the MAGOP Bubble, other wise he’s “That guy who we used to watch”.

    Maybe he’s seriously considering whether he can finesse it by getting bankrolled by a thicko billionaire (Hi, Elon) to run some sort of online, subscriber-based “Tucker Tells You” show covering the politics/social issues of the day and arguing that he’s just sharing his opinions as a private citizen, not acting as a journalist or pundit, all with with an eye to laying out what the manifesto of a Tucker Carlson Presidential run would look like should there be a pressing need on the Right for another celebrity douchebag candidate who the Base think hates the right people. 

    It wouldn’t work in the real world, but this is Bizarroworld MAGOPia we’re talking about.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    Honestly do not know, though suspect not (as it is a civil case).

    Does Dolt 45 being found liable for sexual assault mean he’s required to register as a sex offender?

  32. 32.

    eclare

    @JaySinWA:

    Thanks!  Lindsey’s fall has been stunning.  In the runup to 2016, he was on The Daily Show with Trevor, cracking jokes, putting TFG down.  At the end he and Trevor played a game of pool, and Lindsey was really good, because, as he explained, his dad owned a bar.

    Now he is either raging at Democrats or pleading with MAGA’s to send TFG money.  I look forward to reading the article.

  33. 33.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Meh.  When O’Reilly got shit canned everyone said his geriatric viewers would follow to YouTube – they didnt.

    When Dump got banned from Twitter everyone said his cult would follow to a new site – they didnt.

  34. 34.

    Shalimar

    This is all bullshit posturing to help Tucker get his Fox show back.  Twitter does not have the infrastructure to broadcast an hour-long news program.  And Tucker doesn’t have the staff to produce one.  His “we” is just him and an executive producer who also got fired.

  35. 35.

    JWR

    Now how in the wide, wide world of sports did our founding fathers neglect to include separation of church and state into the Constitution? Was it just one of those things they took as an obvious and unchanging Truth, much the way they thought lifetime appointments for judgeships would automatically insulate them from letting politics shape their rulings? In any case, I feel fortunate that in all the government buildings I’ve been in, none had The Bible on display. That was for church, (dummies!) And good for Rep Stephanie Stahl Hamilton for her good works. (From NPR)

    An Arizona lawmaker (who is also a minister) is under investigation for a Bible prank

    […] In what her own pastor described as an “ill-advised prank,” Stahl Hamilton, who is a Presbyterian minister herself, had been hiding Bibles from the members’ lounge in odd places, like inside a refrigerator. Stahl Hamilton has explained it as a playful commentary on the separation of church and state and a protest against the weaponization of religion in politics.

    […]

    Rev. Katie Sexton-Wood doesn’t condone Stahl Hamilton’s behavior — “I don’t necessarily agree with putting a Bible in a refrigerator” — but she also appreciates the point the representative was trying to make.

    Sexton-Wood heads the Arizona Faith Network, an interfaith organization in Phoenix, and is a pastor in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The Bible is, but shouldn’t be, the lone religious document in the members’ lounge, she said.

    “I carry my Bible with me to places that I may want to have reference to it,” she said. “But I’m not putting it out in the halls of our Capitol, where it can be seen as a predominant document that is forming and informing laws that are being made.”

    Put another way, it’s one thing for individual lawmakers to have Bibles on their desks. But Sexton-Wood says she wonders what Bibles are doing in the members’ lounge in the first place.

  36. 36.

    Princess

    But wait, there’s more … Anyone notice that Milo Y may have got himself into big legal trouble? He used a MTG office credit card to buy a domain name which he then sold to Ye for even more money.

  37. 37.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Shalimar: Good point.  I remember when Olbermann quit MSNBC and went to a fledgling cable channel and it was horrible, he had no guests, no on field reporters, no satellite links, no production, not even graphics.  It was quickly apparent it takes a village to produce a  show.

  38. 38.

    Cameron

    I don’t need Cucker or Elongate to be stupid and racist. I can do that all on my own.

  41. 41.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @yellowdog: ​
    If it’s bad enough, this may finally be enough to get the last people I still follow there to leave. (Mostly fan artists.)

    Any forum has to make some claim to a compilation copyright to be able to publish the comments, but every so often someone goes overboard.

  42. 42.

    Matt McIrvin

    @JWR:

    Now how in the wide, wide world of sports did our founding fathers neglect to include separation of church and state into the Constitution?

    They thought they put it in there, in the opening sentence of the First Amendment, and the main text’s prohibition of religious tests. It’s just that people have been as creative about bad-faith interpretations of those words as they are about the Bible.

  44. 44.

    Ken

    @Shalimar: Twitter does not have the infrastructure to broadcast an hour-long news program.

    Are you allowing for the more efficient compression possible here? He’s only got the two facial expressions, and if necessary they can drop his “medieval peasant hearing about bitcoin*” stupid face and go with a still picture of the snarl.

    * Quoted here a few days ago, and too good not to steal.

  45. 45.

    Geminid

    I see that 5th Virginia CD Congressman Bob Good endorsed Governor DeSantis in the Republican presidential race. He said DeSantis gives Republicans their best chance to win.

    Good was my Representantive before redistricting, and is just a nasty man. He makes my skin crawl.

  47. 47.

    Chris T.

    @rikyrah: Yep – F, er, Tucker Carlson comes from Big Money, and to Big Money people, $25M is … well, not quite spare change, but no big deal.

    Celebrity Net Worth (per a Yahoo news article I found) suggest that his net worth is roughly $30M, so $25M would not double it, but would add significantly to it. But this would not change his life significantly: once you’ve crossed the $20M threshold, you’re generally set for life as an Ultra High Net Worth Individual (note that the Magic Number varies, and the link I have here uses $30M instead of $20M). Even just being a High Net Worth Individual (this link has more information than the previous one) opens a lot of doors.

    Having access to this much money causes one to think differently about money, to some extent. Though I still have to agree with whoever it was that said money is like manure: it can do a lot of good if you spread it around, but if you just pile it up into a big mass, it stinks and burns the ground and pollutes everything around it.

  48. 48.

    JWR

    @Matt McIrvin: Yeah, that was what I’d always thought, but being Original Textualists, the Republicans have decided to pretend that if the specific words, “separation of church and state” aren’t mentioned, it must not be there. Sorta like the way they read the 2A as being a license to murder, I mean “stand their ground”, using any “reasonable” weapon at hand.

  49. 49.

    Geminid

    @Steve in the ATL: Or Bob No-good. He’s the guy who ousted Rep. Denver Riggleman in the 2020 nomination contest. Riggleman might have lost a primary, but Good’s supporters made sure by instituting a caucus/convention process. The district convention was held at Liberty University University, where Good worked as a fundraiser.

  55. 55.

    Matt McIrvin

    @JWR: It’s like bashing Obama for being “afraid” to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” because if you do a textual search of his speeches he doesn’t use those exact three words in that order. If he’d said “radical Islamic terrorism” the magic wording would become something slightly different, like “extremist Muslim terror”. When you’re faced with an attack like that you can’t fix it with a textual change because the goalposts can be moved forever.

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