15 months after his firing, Tucker Carlson returns to Fox News airwaves with a GOP convention speech

NEW YORK — Tucker Carlson returned to Fox News’ airwaves 15 months after being unceremoniously fired, seen Thursday in its coverage of a Republican National Convention speech that highlighted his growing influence in Donald Trump’s world.

Carlson called the Republican nominee to return as president a changed man who effectively “became the leader of this nation” following last Saturday’s assassination attempt.

His 11-minute speech in Milwaukee also highlighted changes in the media personality, who had said privately following the 2020 election that he “truly can’t wait” to ignore Trump. Before being given the prime-time role on the convention’s climactic night, he’d been seen throughout the convention and reportedly lobbied Trump to select Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate.

Fox News aired Carlson’s speech in prime time, during the same hour he had once ruled as cable television news’ most popular personality. CNN and MSNBC did not carry it.

“That was Tucker Carlson,” his Fox replacement, Jesse Watters, said. “You may remember him from the 8 o’clock hour here.”

Carlson was fired a week after Fox agreed to pay more than $787 million to settle a lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems over false statements the network made about the company following the 2020 election. The network never explained why it ousted Carlson, sparking a cottage industry of theories about why the Rupert Murdoch-founded network pulled the plug.

Since then, Carlson started his own online network but hasn’t approached the influence that five nights a week on the most popular cable network afforded him.

He has released a series of online interviews with figures popular in the conservative movement, including one with Trump that was posted to counterprogram a debate between his GOP nomination opponents. His most newsworthy foray was a February interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin, who said later that he thought Carlson “would behave more aggressively and ask so-called sharp questions.”

Carlson has also made money through a series of speeches, and recently completed a speaking tour of Australia. He has booked a September tour of arenas in the United States, each night joined by a special guest that will include Donald Trump Jr., Roseanne Barr, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Russell Brand, Kid Rock, Vivek Ramaswamy and a trio of personalities who also left Fox under unpleasant circumstances — Megyn Kelly, Glenn Beck and Dan Bongino.

His convention speech on Thursday was ad-libbed, according to Justin Wells, a longtime Carlson adviser who spoke to him shortly before Carlson went onstage.

Carlson extolled Trump as a leader whose bravery and courage has inspired people — particularly in the days after the assassination attempt the former president survived in western Pennsylvania last weekend. He also credited Trump for fostering unity at a moment when it would have been easy to do otherwise.

“He turned down the most obvious opportunity in politics to inflame the nation after being shot,” Carlson said. “In the moment, he did his best to bring the country together.”

He said that “people who don’t believe in God are starting to wonder — maybe there is something to this.”

Carlson kept divisive political talk to a minimum, although he called the amount of money the U.S. has spent to help defend Ukraine “a middle finger in the face of every American.”

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder