Outsted Fox News star Tucker Carlson will appear in his first major public event since his April canning on Friday, when he hosts an Iowa presidential forum presented by Blaze Media.
Carlson will speak one-on-one with five candidates at what is billed as “The Family Leadership Summit” — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. The talks start at 10 a.m.
Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is not slated to appear. Neither is former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the candidate who has been the most critical of Trump on the campaign trail.
Following the forum, Carlson will appear on a special episode of “Glenn TV,” for what is being billed as “an intimate conversation” with another former Fox News host, Glenn Beck.
The forum is bring presented in conjunction with The Family Leader, which was formerly evangelical leader James Dobson’s Iowa Family Policy Center.
In the latest Iowa poll, released Friday, Trump led DeSantis by 23 points, with 44% of likely Republican primary voters saying they would support the former president. DeSantis had 21%, Scott 7%, Ramaswany, Pence and Christie 3%, Haley 2% and Hutchinson 1%.
Trump was in Iowa on Friday but has no scheduled events listed on his campaign website. Amid his legal troubles, the 77-year-old former president has not been campaigning at the pace of the his earlier campaigns, Axios reported.
Carlson, since his sudden departure from Fox in April following the $787.5 million settlement in the defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, launched a show, “Tucker on Twitter” that is drawing 9 million to 10 million views per episode, though actual engagement in terms of retweets, likes and comments is far lower.
He is also reportedly raising money to start a new media company, asking conservative investors to back an as-yet-undefined business, as prospects for turning a profit from the Twitter videos remain elusive.
If Carlson launches a web-based media business, he would be following in the footsteps of Beck, who created what is now Blaze Media in 2011 after his own departure from Fox. The company offers livestreamed news, radio, podcasts and social media channels. The flagship website pulls in about 11.1 million visitors per month, according to web data tracker SimilarWeb, while its BlazeTV channel on YouTube has about 1.84 million subscribers.
