The first episode of Tucker Carlson’s new show on Twitter earned tens of millions of views on the platform.
The 10-minute video, posted Tuesday evening, had been viewed about 73 million times by noon Wednesday, though that figure does not indicate how many individual users viewed the video or how long they watched for.
Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner, addressed that fact a few hours after Carlson’s video posted, while he hailed Carlson’s launch.
“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 said, boosting his platform, before conceding “it simply counts if you saw the post on the X/Twitter app or via web browser, not how long you watched.”
As part of his video, Carlson appeared seated behind a desk, speaking to a single camera as he expressed disdain for the news media’s coverage of the war in Ukraine and alleged the U.S. government knows aliens are real, among a few other musings.
Following his ouster from Fox News, Carlson has said he wanted to launch a new version of his popular opinion program, which averaged around 3 million nightly viewers, on Twitter because of Musk’s stated commitment to free speech.
“As of today we have come to Twitter, which we hope will be the short wave radio under the blankets,” Carlson said, closing his first video on the platform. “We’re told there are no gatekeepers here. If that turns out to be false, we’ll leave. But in the meantime, we’re grateful to be here.”