Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson debuted his bare bones broadcast “Tucker on Twitter” on Tuesday night, and the ratings crushed his former network’s.
Carlson’s inaugural ten-minute episode on the social media platform debuted to big-time numbers in the first night of its release.
The video reached nearly 35 million views by the end of the day, only seven hours after it went live on the platform at 6:00 p.m. EST.
In contrast, Fox News ratings for the same time slot on Monday only brought in a meager 1.78 million total views during “Special Report With Brett Baier.”
Ep. 1 pic.twitter.com/O7CdPjF830
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 6, 2023
According to Mediaite, “Jessie Watters Primetime” only slightly improved rating in the 7:00 p.m. hour with 2.02 million tuning in, while “Fox News Tonight,” which replaced Carlson’s show backslid with 1.59 million at 8:00 p.m.
Fox News’ total viewer averages for the 8-11 p.m. primetime slots, which included “Hannity,” “The Ingraham Angle,” and “Gutfeld!” only averaged 1.73 million.
During his first show on Twitter, Carlson torched the media, talked UFOs, and discussed the explosion of the Ukraine’s Kakhovka Dam on Tuesday morning.
He explained that the water “wiped out” villages, destroyed a hydropower plant, and put “the largest nuclear reactor in Europe in danger of melting down.”
“So, if this was intentional, it was not a military tactic — it was an act of terrorism,” Carlson alleged.
He noted that the dam was “effectively Russian,” as it was built by their government, is in Russian occupied territory, and supplies water to Crimea, which houses the Russian Black Sea fleet.
“Blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine, but it hurts Russia more. And for precisely that reason, the Ukrainian government has considered destroying it,” he continued.
“In December, The Washington Post quoted a Ukrainian general saying his men had fired American-made rockets at the dam’s floodgate, as a test strike.”
He noted that any “fair person” would conclude the Ukrainians took out the dam, just like the Nordstream 2 pipeline, then tore into the media for their coverage of both events.
“No one who’s paid to cover these things seemed to entertain even the possibility it could have been the Ukrainians who did it. No chance of that,” Carlson remarked. “Zelensky is too decent for terrorism.”
He said that mainstream media “mostly” ignores stories that matter if they don’t fit into their narrative.
“What’s happened to the hundreds of billions of US dollars we’ve sent to Ukraine? No clue. Who organized those BLM riots three years ago? No one’s gotten to the bottom of that. What exactly happened on 9/11? Well, it’s still classified,” he ranted.
“Not only are the media not interested in any of this, they’re actively hostile to anybody who is. In journalism, curiosity is the gravest crime,” Carlson stated.
He he cited the example of the former military intelligence officer who blew the whistle on Monday about the U.S. government’s alleged possession of crashed UFO’s, which he alleged were being used to develop advanced weapons systems.
“UFOs are actually real, and apparently so is extraterrestrial life,” he exclaimed. “In a normal country, this news would qualify as a bombshell the story of the millennium. But in our country, it doesn’t.”
He said that both the New York Times and Washington Post both refused to run the story.
“If you’re wondering why our country seems so dysfunctional, this is a big part of the reason,” he continued.
“Nobody knows what’s happening. A small group of people control accesses to all relevant information. And the rest of us don’t know.”
He alleged that the American people are “allowed” to talk about racism, but broaching the subject of “something that really matters” and “they” will make us be quiet in order to “maintain control.”
“That’s how most of us now live here in the United States — manipulated by lies, silenced by taboos. It is unhealthy and is dehumanizing, and we’re tired of it,” he stated.
Carlson said that his show has come to come to Twitter because he was told there were “no gatekeepers” on the platform.
“If that turns out to be false, we’ll leave,” he concluded. “But in the meantime, we are grateful to be here. We’ll be back with much more very soon.”