In the barely 24 hours since Elon Musk closed his deal to buy Twitter, there’s been a lot of talk about what that will mean for currently banned users. QAnon mouthpieces are positive he’ll let them back. Donald Trump has said he won’t come back regardless. And Tucker Carlson has already engaged in some performative ridiculousness, trying to make it look like Musk reversed his suspension—a thing that definitely did not happen.
Monday evening, a few hours after Musk’s deal was announced, Carlson tweeted, “We’re back.”
We’re back.
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 25, 2022
Carlson was suspended from Twitter last month over some transphobic tweets. The implication with yesterday’s tweet is obviously that his suspension was undone now that Musk has taken over.
Except Musk hasn’t taken over. It was announced yesterday that his deal with the Twitter board was closed but nothing has taken effect yet and even if it had, it would be very weird if the very first thing Musk did—before talking with employees, before literally anything having to do with actually taking over a business—was to click “unban” on Tucker Carlson’s account.
What actually happened was that Tucker Carlson deleted the tweets that violated Twitter’s terms of service. That was all he ever had to do. Elon Musk had nothing to do with undoing anything.
Tucker Carlson will, of course, deny that he pretended otherwise. He will say that there was a “liberal meltdown” twisting his words, that he never actually said Musk brought him back. My guess is that he will say that what he meant was that he chose to come back now that Musk is taking over.
But that is absolutely not what he wanted people to believe with that tweet. He wanted people to believe that Musk has opened the door to everyone who was ever banned because of their hateful bigotry. And while that may very well happen, it hasn’t yet, and Tucker Carlson sure wasn’t any sort of pioneer.
(via Daily Dot, image: Janos Kummer/Getty Images)
