Tucker Carlson's new Twitter show, "Tucker on Twitter," garnered about 80 million views by 2 p.m. on Wednesday.
The former Fox News host, in a roughly 10-minute video posted Tuesday and captioned "Ep. 1," claimed that Ukraine was to blame for the destruction of a massive dam in Russian-occupied territory that caused widespread flooding.
The one-time, top-rating talk show host on U.S. cable television said that he hoped Twitter would be the "short-wave radio under the blankets" with "no gatekeepers."
"If that turns out to be false, we'll leave," he said.
Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted after Carlson posted his video that it "would be great to have shows from all parts of the political spectrum on this platform!"
"View count is actually understated, as it does not include anything from our API, for example tweets you see in Google search results or on Bloomberg terminals," Musk added before conceding, "it simply counts if you saw the post on the X/Twitter app or via web browser, not how long you watched."
Fox News Media and its top-rated host Carlson agreed to part ways in late April, less than a week after parent company Fox Corp settled the defamation lawsuit for $787.5 million.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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