Tucker Carlson

At least, that’s what the billionaire is claiming.

Just shortly after Tucker Carlson announced in a video lauding Elon Musk’s social media platform as the only safe space left for Truth Tellers like himself that he’d be taking his “show” to Twitter, the billionaire set the record straight.

Musk — who’s been doing favors for white nationalists and giving far-right extremist rhetoric an elevated platform since his Twitter takeover — tweeted to clarify that there’s no deal with Tucker and also to maintain that he, the founding father of free speech, is not playing favorites.

Tucker Carlson is scooping up his massive viewership and taking his show to Elon Musk’s janky, zombified Twitter.

Set against the backdrop of what appears to be the inside of a rustic and masculine cabin in the wood, Carlson made the announcement with a familiar scowl and posted the video to his Twitter account Tuesday afternoon. He said a bunch of his usual stuff about the media being misleading and cable news being propaganda, while making some unsubtle digs at Fox, like:

“The best you can hope for in the news business at this point is the freedom to tell the fullest truth that you can. But there are always limits. And you know that if you bump up against those limits often enough, you will be fired for it,” he said.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the ousters of Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon, as well as the Supreme Court order on mifepristone.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

Let me just start out with the facts: The Economist/YouGov published the results of a poll this week that surveyed 1,500 U.S. adults between March 10–14 on a number of different topics, mostly about people’s feelings on the state of the country.

A few of the questions touched on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), asking respondents about how favorably they saw him generally and his performance as speaker of the House. Two questions asked about the issue of McCarthy giving Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and his production team exclusive access to all the internal Jan. 6 Capitol security footage for him to use to spread propaganda on his propaganda show. The survey asked if those polled had heard about the issue and if they approved or disapproved of it. The split in approval versus disapproval was relatively close.