by Frank Holmes, reporter
Tucker Carlson just make an announcement that will rock the 2024 presidential primaries.
As the presidential race heats up, Tucker Carlson is going to Iowa.
But no, he’s still not running. Instead, the former Fox News host will be on the presidential debate stage with five presidential candidates, moderating the first candidate forum of the 2024 GOP primary season.
Carlson will press the candidates from his unique, America First perspective this Friday starting at 10 a.m. Central time.
Confirmed so far are the candidates Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, anti-Woke business leader Vivek Ramaswamy, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Vice President Mike Pence, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
President Donald Trump has indicated he’s likely to skip the event—and possibly hold a competing event in another venue, as he did during the 2016 primaries—but back then, he was competing against hostile anchors from CNN.
Carlson’s emcee role will be broadcast on Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV, which teamed up with the Iowa-based conservative and pro-family group The Family Leader.
The presidential debate shows the enormous influence Carlson has in the GOP, and in the conservative news culture, after Fox News unceremoniously fired him in April.
🚨BIG NEWS: 🚨
Blaze Media is teaming up with THE FAMiLY LEADER to bring you the first presidential forum of the 2024 Republican Primary season, hosted by Tucker Carlson. We’ll be live streaming this event all day Friday, July 14th on BlazeTV and the BlazeTV YouTube channel. pic.twitter.com/YdqAfoX0VR
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) July 10, 2023
Fox News reportedly is paying Carlson his contract through December 2024—paying him not to work so that he cannot impact the 2024 Republican presidential race.
So much for that.
The onetime lone conservative TV network also did all it could to keep Tucker Carlson from reaching his viewers… and failed miserably.
As of this writing, the most recent episode of “Tucker on Twitter” has garnered more than 9.2 million views — three times as many people as would see an episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, even on its best day.
Ep. 8 Rick from Boston is telling us he wants to be known as female Admiral Rachel Levine. Accept his lie or pay the consequences, bigot. pic.twitter.com/otDl5EITYs
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 30, 2023
The previous seven episodes continue to rack up social media hits. More than 120.2 million people tuned in to “Episode 1” on June 6.
Altogether, more than 392 million people—nearly the entire population of the United States—have helped Tucker Carlson bypass Fox News and establish a platform for his populist conservative views.
Fox News not only yanked their top-rated host off the air but sent Carlson a cease-and-desist letter over his Twitter videos and fired the producers and staffers who used to work on his now-canceled show.
The move is supposed to keep its employees in line.
“Fox News wants hosts who will draw ratings but who won’t rock the boat,” wrote Justin Peters in the left-wing website Slate.com. Fox is putting its chips on “marquee talents who are nevertheless aware of their own expendability.”
That strategy landed Fox News in second place in prime time for the first time in years, losing out to far-Left MSNBC in June.
Things are so bad for Fox News Channel that its stock has been downgraded by $4 a share.
“Viewership is down -19%” for the first six months of this year, compared to 2021, due to “programming,” said analysts at Wells Fargo. “More worryingly, Fox News was 52% of cable news prime-time viewership for 2020-22, 51% in Jan’23, and that has slid to a low of 38% in June’23 post-TC (Tucker Carlson).”
Meanwhile, Tucker has just increased his influence.
And now, Carlson is going to be on stage with five of the people vying to be the next president of the United States—asking the questions, choosing the issues, and demanding answers from the people who want to run the country come January 2025.
Trump is skipping the debate, cause he holds a 30-point lead over second-place DeSantis and believes he doesn’t need the forum.
Trump will likely skip the first officially recognized presidential debate on August 23 in Milwaukee, experts say. Trump is “going to try to make the argument that, ‘I’m far ahead, what’s the point of dealing with the B-leaguers,’” one Republican strategist told The Hill.
But Tucker Carlson is no B-league host… and his name brings massive online popularity.
Moderating the very first presidential primary forum, in the first state in the nation to cast votes for a candiate, proves Tucker Carlson is not going anywhere. He’s going to have a massive impact on the 2024 Republican primaries—and maybe the election.
And without Donald Trump to soak in the spotlight, Republican voters might get to like the sight of Tucker Carlson on the presidential stage.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”