Tucker Carlson says ‘child molestation is teetering on the verge of acceptability’

Tucker Carlson’s second Twitter broadcast amassed tens of millions of views within hours – in another sign his departure from Fox News did nothing to affect his enormous influence.

In the 13-minute monologue released Thursday night, Carlson urged Americans to “hold on to your taboos like your life depended on it” and made the inflammatory suggestion that white supremacy is an “outdated opinion.”

Sixteen hours later, around 40 million people had seen the post and it had been retweeted and liked a combined total of more than 500,000 times.

The huge numbers will likely reassure Carlson that choosing Elon Musk’s Twitter as the platform for his post-Fox career was the right decision. By comparison, his “Tucker Carlson Tonight” show on Fox News, which was the most-watched show on cable news, averaged 3.1 million viewers per night.

But some commentators said the move to a platform where he’s essentially a solo operator with little oversight pushed him further into the realms of conspiracy theories.

Carlson cited a Wall Street Journal investigation that revealed how popular social media site Instagram was helping connect and promote a network of pedophile accounts

He focused the last show on ‘taboos’ and claimed that ‘the biggest taboo of all is on the edge of acceptability: paedophilia’.

Carlson cited a Wall Street Journal investigation published two days ago that revealed how popular social media site Instagram helped connect and promote a network of pedophile accounts, allowing people to search for explicit hashtags.

Carlson then made a series of comments on issues ranging from the shooting of Kyle Rittenhouse during the 2020 BLM riots to Joe Biden’s assertion that white supremacy is ‘the most dangerous terrorist threat’ to America. .

He suggested that modern America was now less critical of child abuse, and that in the “old system…pedophilia was a crime, having old-fashioned views was not.”

The first episode of Carlson, which criticized Western support for Ukraine and accused the media of ignoring a whistleblower’s claims that “UFOs are real”, raised 110.4 million seen on Friday.

The clip reached 80 million views in less than 24 hours, to the jubilation of conservative commentators who claimed it “shattered the media matrix”.

Twitter metrics measure the number of times a tweet “has been seen”, so the total number of people who actually watched the video is likely to be lower.

Fox News fired Carlson in April, and his first monologue accused media organizations like his former employer of keeping people in the dark in a deliberate attempt to keep them in submission.

He said he hoped his show “would be shortwave radio under the covers.”

Carlson’s videos include a watermark that reads Tucker on Twitter. Twitter owner Elon Musk said it would be “great to have shows from all parts of the political spectrum on this platform”.

Tucker Carlson was the most-watched man on cable news until his electric shock in April

Carlson and his wife Susan Andrews are seen shortly after he was fired from Fox in late April

“Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, which was the most-watched cable news program, averaged 3.1 million viewers each weeknight in the weeks leading up to his shock layoff.

Fox’s Lost Hour at 8 p.m. has since lost nearly half of its viewers, and other primetime shows have also seen significant declines in ratings.

Carlson took to Twitter in a surprising move just weeks after he was abruptly fired by Fox in April.

Carlson’s videos include a watermark that reads Tucker on Twitter. Twitter owner Elon Musk said it would be “great to have shows from all parts of the political spectrum on this platform”.

Fox’s Lost Hour at 8 p.m. has since lost nearly half of its viewers, and other primetime shows have also seen significant declines in ratings.

Carlson took to Twitter in a surprising move just weeks after he was abruptly fired by Fox in April.