here I am in my shed doing great. getting fired was the best thing to ever happen to me. over here I keep the garden trowels. this is some sort of chisel type device. I have lots of cool stuff in this coffee can, check it out. maxwell house! remember when coffee came in cans https://t.co/MyiNrdhphK
— kilgore trout, blue check blocker (@KT_So_It_Goes) May 9, 2023
turning down 25 million dollars so i can make content geared exclusively to catturd2
— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) May 9, 2023
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!
Tucker Carlson seeing much lower public interest in wake of Fox News exit pic.twitter.com/BRp8wtHUgA
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) May 9, 2023
Of course, Dylan Byers will believe anything a media flack feeds him:
+ More via @Axios: Carlson's lawyer has sent letter to Fox Corp accusing network of fraud & breach of contract, with "demands that could precede legal action."
+ Carlson also claims he was taken off air as part of Dominion settlement, which Fox denieshttps://t.co/tr9n2IJWCG
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) May 9, 2023
Tucker Carlson is taking on his final form as an Alex Jones-style crank, just with better production values thanks to the support of one of the richest men on Earth.
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) May 9, 2023
Carlson found the only person with bottomless pockets more willing to publish white nationalist content than Rupert Murdoch.
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) May 9, 2023
I expect Carlson to be totally unhinged and Musk to do everything possible to drive traffic to him, but this is a shitty platform on which to watch long videos and getting his geriatric audience to switch over will be a challenge.
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) May 9, 2023
one funny thing to contemplate: carlson reportedly got axed (at least, in part) because of his constant mockery of/complaining about the poor production value of fox's streaming service. imagine what kind of quality he gets to look forward to here. https://t.co/dhkmrHfOyW
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) May 9, 2023
at least from the raw story telling of it, it sounds like the entire purpose of this is to use it as a vector to challenge his $25M non-compete in court
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) May 10, 2023
Should probably at least consider that this is a Boring Company not a Starlink and the thing never gets off the ground. pic.twitter.com/MjN0O8L3wD
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) May 9, 2023
Just a couple of True Believers, megaphoning the MAGAt brand…
We may never know why the media engaged in the "bigotry" of using the word racism in more stories starting around the middle of the last decade.
I'm glad that Elon Musk is highlighting this important question to his followers. Maybe they can figure it out! pic.twitter.com/lIPfscV2NC
— Michael Edison Hayden (@MichaelEHayden) May 9, 2023
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!
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
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.
eclare
@lgerard:
Hahaha…
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.
NotMax
@lgerard
“It’s not just a tan. It’s an Agitpropertone™ tan!”
//
ColoradoGuy
Hoo boy, massive hailstorm just now. Golf ball sized hailstones, and lots of them. Hope TaMara and her critters came through OK.
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!
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.
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.
NotMax
@Suzanne
“I’m still big. It’s the media that got small.”
//
eclare
@NotMax:
Hahaha…classic.
NotMax
@eclare
In the same vein.
“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Musk.”
eclare
@NotMax:
Again, classic.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@BeautifulPlumage: Scenarios like these always make me worry about the innocents caught within the blast radius.
NotMax
@Bruce K in ATH-GR
Lie down with hogs, wake up with mud.
//
Tony Jay
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.
Frankensteinbeck
Forcing liberals to put up with bigots is exactly what Musk wants. So far, they’re letting him.
MomSense
@lgerard:
Rock block?
ok that was bad even for me.
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?
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.
NotMax
@MomSense
Tucktosterone.
:)
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.
Jay
Frankensteinbeck
@Tony Jay:
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.
Brachiator
Like a herpes attack?
NotMax
@Frankensteinbeck
Ending up like William Miller, only for Russian Express.
//
JaySinWA
I just read this Bulwark piece by Wil Saleten https://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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
Cameron
I don’t need Cucker or Elongate to be stupid and racist. I can do that all on my own.
Joey Maloney
Breaking: Tucker goes from being a tool to the whole toolshed.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
His stepmother is the Swanson Foods heiress
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.
Matt McIrvin
@JWR:
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.
MomSense
@NotMax:
ha!
Ken
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.
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.
Steve in the ATL
@Geminid: he should aways be referenced as “the ironically named Bob Good”
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.
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.
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.
Quinerly
@JaySinWA:
Thanks for posting this. Should be frontpaged imo.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: No, it does not.
brantl
@NotMax: The finding was civil not criminal.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL:
Have we tried tossing him in to an ocean or lake? He might bob real good.
James E Powell
@eclare:
Fall? He was always among the lowest of the low.
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.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus:
ha! Maybe we test him in shark-infested Australian waters?
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL:
Salt water is more floaty.