Okay. We still don’t know why Tucker Carlson is out at Fox* but we know where he’s going. He’s setting up shop at Twitter, cheered on by Elon Musk.
Next question: Can he make money there?
To be clear, money isn’t the only reason Carlson wants to be on Twitter. And if he was most interested in money, he probably wouldn’t go anywhere at all in the near future since doing so looks likely to kick off a legal fight with Fox about the remainder of his very lucrative contract. Carlson wants to be on Twitter because he wants attention — both in general and in the runup to the 2024 elections.
But Carlson also likes money, and Fox reportedly paid him $20 million a year. Can he make anything like that on Twitter? I think he can.
My gut says that Musk has already promised Carlson that he’ll pay him as much or more than his Fox paycheck to come to Twitter. After all, if you’ve already incinerated tens of billions of dollars to buy Twitter, why not shovel a few million more onto the fire? Bringing the most popular and powerful host on cable TV news to his platform guarantees we’ll continue to pay attention to Musk. And to Musk, attention is priceless.
Musk, for what it’s worth, says “we have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever” with Carlson, and if Musk were a normal person, I’d encourage you to parse that statement for potential loopholes — maybe there’s a verbal deal but not a signed one? But since it’s Musk, who just makes things up, I wouldn’t bother spending energy on that. Maybe he’s telling the truth, maybe he’s not.
For now, Musk wants to use Carlson as a high-profile test case for his pitch that Twitter can become a full-fledged…
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