Why it matters: A breach of contract claim sets Fox News up to explore potential legal action against Carlson, a move that would intensify the already thorny public battle between the two parties.
Carlson's lawyers told Axios that any legal action by Fox would violate his First Amendment rights.
"Fox defends its very existence on freedom of speech grounds. 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," said Carlson's lawyer, Bryan Freedman, in a statement to Axios.
Tucker's motivation -- I speculate without evidence -- might have been to post a completely legal video, to induce Fox to declare he's in breach, so that Tucker can now say, "According to Fox, the contract is over, so I'm going ahead with my show. And I'm going to sue them for voiding the contract without cause so I can get my $25 million."
I have no idea if this makes any sense.
Tucker's Twitter debut garnered 70 million views.
Egg with Legs Brian Stelter attacked Tucker Carlson's independent, wildcat show for being a skeleton crew operation:
"Tucker on Twitter" is how @TuckerCarlson's video is branded. Notice his right hand in the wide shot: He's using a TelePrompTer controller to run the prompter himself pic.twitter.com/mzpJ9SFG88
-- Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 6, 2023
Brian Stelter, the expert on ratings, declared, without evidence, that Tucker's 70 million views were fake:
There are two kinds of people on Twitter: Those who believe the "view counts" especially around alleged video streams, and those who know better.
-- Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 7, 2023
The rest of the corporate media attacked Tucker Carlson's independent, wildcat show for not having the massive staff and huge budgets which have propelled them to the precipice of an Industry Extinction Event.
CNN:
Tucker Carlson launches first episode of low-budget Twitter show after Fox News firing
Oliver Darcy
By Oliver Darcy, CNN
Published 11:32 PM EDT, Tue June 6, 2023
How are CNN high budgets -- Megyn Kelly said the other day that CNN was notoriously overstaffed -- translating into viewership or credibility, you skinny-jeaned gape-assed pussy?
Anne Applebaum called Tucker's observation that Ukraine and the US blew up the Nord Stream pipeline as well as the dam "lies."
Anne Applebaum
@anneapplebaum
Tucker Carlson's lies cost Fox $800 million. Now he is still lying, and Twitter will eventually pay the price too.
Zelenskyy's going to sue?
Applebaum herself was lying:
@amuse
@amuse
@CommunityNotes
Evidence released by Dominion showed Tucker Carlson actually refuted claims against the company. Also the settlement was less than $800M.
I point out Anne Applebaum's tweet because her own husband, a Polish political figure, also declared that the US blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.. But he praised the US for blowing it up.
I'd link his tweet celebrating the US's bombing of the pipleline but he has, get this, deleted it.
But here it is anyway:
This is the typical leftist maneuver: If you observe a fact of leftist behavior and criticize it, you're engaging in "conspiracy theories and lies." But if you observe that same fact of leftist behavior and praise it, you're telling the truth. The truth or falsity of the observation depends entirely not on the external objective facts but only whether you are praising the left or criticizing it when noting the fact.