There’s going to be no shortage of options for Tucker Carlson after the wildly-popular conservative news anchor was fired by Fox News a few weeks ago.
One potentially surprising suitor popped up last week, though – Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter.
Axios contained information in a report last week that said that Musk and Carlson have chatted about how they might work together now after Carlson is officially a free agent.
The report that Axios published focused on how Carlson was coming closer to a decision of allowing some of his main allies to start attacking Fox News for locking him into his previous contract. If they were able to do that, he would remain “on the sidelines” until January of 2025, though he would be paid about $20 million per year to do so.
Carlson has enlisted the services of Bryan Freedman, who is a high-powered attorney. Don Lemon, a co-host of CNN who was fired by his network recently, also retained Freedman.
In a statement released last week, Freedman said:
“The idea that anyone is going to silence Tucker and prevent him from speaking to his audience is beyond preposterous.”
Axios’ report laid out that Carlson has been using his free time “plotting a media empire of his own.” To this point, though, he can’t do anything unless Fox News lets him free of his current contract.
Some sources have said that Carlson was thinking about starting his own media company that would go direct-to-consumer and charge people a subscription price to join. That would give him the opportunity to directly reach his audience, rather than go through an intermediary such as another media network.
Bill O’Reilly, also a former host on Fox News, does this same exact thing today.
Axios further laid out that Carlson has reportedly talked with Musk about how the two might work together. No specific details were provided on what that arrangement might look like or even what the discussion entailed.
Some other media companies such as Rumble and Newsmax have reportedly already offered Carlson a larger contract than the one he was working on with Fox News.
Multiple sources close to Carlson have said that some of his main allies have been yearning to start attacking Fox News, but the anchor has urged them to hold off on doing so. Instead, they say, he said he prefers to handle the matter in a private and professional way.
That being said, the sources quoted by Axios said Carlson definitely wants to be free of Fox News, and is working to “unleash” all of his allies so they can attack his former network.
Once he was removed from Fox News, Carlson issued a statement that hinted that he wanted his new focus to be covering issues that were significant but don’t often make their way onto television airwaves.
It read, in part:
“The undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all: war, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, corporate power, natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues?”
