Tricky Tucker is at it again, telling viewers about how the big tech boogeyman is silencing the right for not expressing approved “narratives.” Except in this case, he’s laying praise at Elon Musk for his acquisition of Twitter despite the fact that his return to Twitter after a month-long ban wasn’t because Twitter’s new management allowed him to log back in.
Mediaite originally pointed out that his narrative that Musk basically saved him is false, and instead the Fox News personality is back on Twitter simply because it acquiesced to Twitter’s demands to delete an offending tweet.
Here’s the back story. Right-wing parody site Babylon Bee was suspended from Twitter after violating its rules against “hateful conduct.” The account was suspended in March due to misgendering (which is against Twitter rules) Assistant Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender woman, by calling her “Man of the Year” for 2022. Levine had been named one of USA Today’s “Women of the Year” in March.
Carlson had originally endorsed that tweet along with another on his show from regular hate-monger Charlie Kirk who also promoted transphobia by tweeting Levine had spent “54 years as a man.” Carlson’s tweet read “But wait. Both those tweets are true” alongside screenshots of both posts. Carlson’s account was issued a suspension March 23 along with Kirk, and they were told that they would have to delete the tweets and spend 12 hours in read-only mode before their accounts came back. Carlson’s tweet has since been deleted, but only on April 25 did Carlson announce his return to the platform.
Twitter has not yet responded to a request for comment to confirm when Carlson’s account was restored and why, but the timing is indicative of how Carlson is trying to spin the narrative around so-called Twitter “censorship.”
Though Carlson sputtered about how people are “arbitrarily banned due to the whims of politicians in charge,” chyrons for Carlson’s show read “UNSHACKLED BY ELON MUSK: FREE SPEECH RESTORED; @TUCKERCARLSON BACK ON TWITTER.” This, of course, ignores the fact that Musk is yet to take direct control of the platform.
It’s not like Tucker already hasn’t had a hate-hate relationship with the truth, but this sudden outpouring of support for Musk is in the hopes that the Tesla founder’s vague interpretation of free speech will help them return to the platform without fear of bumping up against those pesky limits on what they can and cannot say.
Conservatives have struggled to come up with social media alternatives over the past few years, with them consistently breaking Twitter’s terms of service. Despite Former President Donald Trump’s longtime love affair with the platform, he has maintained he will not come back to Twitter even if Musk “pardons” his account.
In terms of whether Twitter’s rules will change about hate speech like malicious misgendering, it remains to be seen how much control Musk will have over the company. Though the new owner of Twitter has said in the past he “support [sic] trans” he has come out strongly in the past against people who publicly share their pronouns. Though of course that might just be the knee-jerk opinions of a man well known for insulting people on Twitter, especially anyone who disagrees with him or points out faults in either him or his companies.
Where that will leave folks like Carlson as they attempt to heap praise on the tech billionaire while simultaneously spreading misinformation, time will tell.
