The Patriot Post® · Tucker Soars While Fox and CNN Slump
Welp, that didn’t take long.
Tucker Carlson took to Twitter Tuesday night for his first 10-minute monologue since having been canned by the lefty brass at Fox News, and it’s safe to say he exceeded expectations. Those who’d hoped maybe his cable TV followers wouldn’t be able to find him on the Internet were bitterly disappointed.
How bitterly, you ask? This bitterly: In less than three days since he posted his monologue, he’s gotten nearly 110 million views. Let that stunning number sink in, and consider: His typical primetime audience at Fox News was around 3.5 million viewers. And consider, too: Since Carlson has been gone, Fox viewership has taken a huge hit. For the month of May, the first whole month of Fox News programming without Carlson, the network averaged 1.42 million viewers in primetime, a 37% drop from the same month a year ago. Ouch.
What on earth was Fox News thinking? And why hasn’t anyone in leadership been fired?
Carlson’s presentation was what we’ve come to expect: a pointed and sarcastic take on some news that he feels has been misreported or underreported, or both. In this case, he talked about the blown-up Nova Kakhovka dam in Ukraine, the blown-up Nord Stream pipelines beneath the Baltic Sea, our corrupt mainstream media, and UFOs.
Not surprisingly, he saved his harshest critique for the news industry. Having lamented the lack of coverage of a whistleblower’s revelation that the U.S. government has physical evidence of extraterrestrial aircraft and their pilots.
“So if you’re wondering why our country seems so dysfunctional,” he said, “this is a big part of the reason. Nobody knows what’s happening. A small group of people control access to all relevant information. … That’s how most of us now live here in the United States — manipulated by lies, silenced by taboos. It is unhealthy and it’s dehumanizing, and we’re tired of it. As of today, we’ve come to Twitter, which we hope will be the shortwave radio under the blankets. We’re told there are no gatekeepers here. If that turns out to be false, we’ll leave. But in the meantime, we are grateful to be here.”
It isn’t all seashells and balloons for Carlson, though. As NBC News reports, “Fox News told Tucker Carlson’s lawyers Wednesday that the former star anchor breached his contract with the conservative network when he released the first episode of a new show on Twitter this week, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.”
So Fox News, which has built its fortune by using the Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of a free press to its fullest, is now threatening to sue Tucker Carlson for exercising his own First Amendment rights. Or perhaps the “fair and balanced” network is simply suing him because he’s more popular than they are. Which reminds us: Episode 2 dropped last night, if you’re among the tens of millions who are interested.
Elsewhere in cable news, CNN CEO Chris Licht is now former CEO Chris Licht, having been ousted by the struggling network after just over a year there. He must’ve wanted to spend more time with his family.
Apparently, Licht’s boss, Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav, thought a year would be plenty of time in which to remake the CNN cesspool, to rid the network of Don Lemahhn, Covid Chris Cuomo, Spanky Toobin, and Fester Stelter, and return it to its former glory as The Most Trusted Name in News™.
Fat chance of that. As Fox News reports, Licht tried to “tamp down spectacle” at CNN. “He toned down the use of the network’s breaking news graphics, fired left-leaning figures like John Harwood and Brian Stelter, and reached out to Republican lawmakers who had been alienated by the prior regime’s approach. But liberal staffers who craved the Zucker-era partisan tone never embraced Licht.”
You’re telling us. As we reported on Monday, Licht made the mistake of giving unprecedented access to The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta to cover his turbulent first year as CEO. But several months, nearly 100 interviews, and 15,000 words later, what he got was an interminable hit piece full of dirty laundry and frayed nerves — including those of anchor Anderson Cooper, who said on air after the network’s highly successful town hall with Donald Trump that their viewers “have every right to be outraged and angry and never watch this network again.”
“I have great respect for Chris, personally and professionally,” said Zaslav.
We should hope so. Zaslav, after all, hand-picked Licht to replace CNN’s previous failure, Jeff Zucker. He continued: “The job of leading CNN was never going to be easy, especially at a time of huge disruption and transformation, and he has poured his heart and soul into it. While we know we have work to do as we look to identify a new leader, we have absolute confidence in the team we have in place and will continue to fight for CNN and its world class journalism.”
In short, then, while Fox News and CNN take on water, The Good Ship Tucker sails merrily along.