Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s new show, Tucker on Twitter, might not be on Twitter for much longer. On Monday, Carslon’s ex-employer upped the pressure on its former host and sent the right-wing commentator a “cease and desist” letter, according to Axios and confirmed by multiple reports. Lawyers for the company alleged Carlson’s new show represents a breach of his Fox contract.
The cease and desist letter, which reportedly features the phrase “NOT FOR PUBLICATION” marks the latest in the legal drama brewing between the two titans of conservative media. Fox fired Carlson earlier this year allegedly due to executives’ concerns over insubordinate messages uncovered during the Dominion Voting suit and over another suit accusing the host and Fox of sexism and harassment. Lawyers for Fox claim Carlson’s new show violates his contract because the company have exclusive rights to his content until early 2025. Carlson claims he’s using Twitter simply to express his First Amendment right to speech.
“Doubling down on the most catastrophic programming decision in the history of the cable news industry, Fox is now demanding that Tucker Carlson be silent until after the 2024 election,” Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer representing Carlson said in a statement sent to the New York Times. “Tucker will not be silenced by anyone.” Fox did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
Carlson is only two episodes into his new show on Twitter, and it’s already jam-packed with the conspiracy-theory-clad, trollish diatribes he’s spent years perfecting. In just around 23 total minutes, Carlson mocked Ukraine’s “sweaty and rat-like” prime minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accused the mainstream media of trying to bury a story about government-captured alien corpses, alleged South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham smelled like death, and generally tried to convince his audience of unique ability to deliver them the real TRUTH.
“The media lie, they do,” the former star of one of cable’s most watched newscasts said. “But mostly they just ignore the stories that matter.”
The tactics worked. In less than a week, Carlson’s first episode attracted 114.7 million views and around 269,7000 retweets. Though the comparisons aren’t perfect, Carlson’s former Fox show averaged just around 3.3 million viewers per episode last year. Fox claims this new show directly violates Carlson’s non-compete clause of his contract. If the network gets its way, Carlson, who’s still being paid by Fox, would be forced to spend the next year and change shut out from the political conversation. Carlson agreed to the non-compete, but now his lawyers claim Fox’s demands violate his constitutional right to speech.
“Fox defends its very existence on freedom of speech grounds,” Bryan Freedman, one of Carlson’s attorneys said in a statement last week. “Now they want to take Tucker Carlson’s right to speak freely away from him because he took to social media to share his thoughts on current events.”
Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner since last October, retweeted Carlson’s announcement on the platform but said the two of them had “not signed any kind of deal whatsoever.” Critics of Musk in recent months have claimed his loosening of content moderation standards and amplification of fringe voices is positioning Twitter as a type of modern, right-wing media alternative to Fox News.
