Free Press busts the Tucker Candace Grift

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And it, too, has garnered an enormous audience, with the series drawing nearly 14.4 million views in just five months.

But unlike Loose Change, Carlson has found a way to capitalize on his conspiracies. A 60-second host read on The Tucker Carlson Show is listed at $45,000, with a minimum commitment of $450,000, according to the website for Red Seat Ventures, which manages Carlson’s business. The cost for every 1,000 ad impressions, or CPM, is $36, and there’s a guaranteed 1.25 million impressions.

Conspiracy theories are a booming business. Once confined to the internet’s distant provinces, YouTube and Spotify videos tagged “deep state” or “psyop” routinely outperform legacy news clips. Videos of “reptilian” humans and deep dives into the CIA and remote viewing compete for clicks.

And these videos aren’t just from fringe, basement creators. Candace Owens’s and Carlson’s YouTube shows are two of the most popular in the United States, with 5.8 million and nearly 5.2 million subscribers, respectively, each boasting more subscribers than The New York Times’ own channel. The two hosts have made a name for themselves for trading in the outrageous. Earlier this week, Owens posted a trailer for a new series. Titled Bride of Charlie, it promises to “investigate” Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika.

Owens knows what sells. Her Becoming Brigitte series, which alleges that French president Emmanuel Macron’s wife was born a man, has topped 32 million views on YouTube. (The Macrons have filed a 22-count defamation suit in the United States against Owens.)

One of the most popular conspiracies being peddled by online creators: the antisemitic trope that Jews in some way control the world.

Antisemitic conspiracies are nothing new. Anti-Jewish blood libels are centuries old and claims of the Rothschilds running the world date back to the 19th century. But online antisemitism today is algorithm-optimized, fusing false claims with modern virality.

Carlson’s interview with fringe Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, who griped alongside Carlson that it’s “against the law to criticize Israel” in his state, got nearly one million views. His episode with Nick Fuentes, who said “organized Jewry” is warping America, drew six million views within days. Carlson notably did not push back against Fuentes’s claims during the interview. More than a week later, he defended his choice to interview Fuentes during a sitdown with Megyn Kelly: “You may think I’m a terrible person. Okay. I’m just doing my thing, which is I want to understand what people think. And I’m committed to that,” Carlson said. “That’s my view,” he added. “But that doesn’t mean that I share the views. I’m not telling Nazi jokes, obviously, or Holocaust jokes.”

Meanwhile, Owens’s descent into antisemitic conspiracy has only accelerated as her audience has grown. She promoted August Rohling’s famously antisemitic 19th-century book, The Talmudic Jew (Der Talmudjude); linked Israel to Charlie Kirk’s killing (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called allegations of Israel’s involvement “false” and “outrageous”); and recently said the protests in Iran were fabricated so that Netanyahu could make a play for Iran’s land. During a July 2024 episode, after declaring that kabbalists “believe they would inherit the Earth through deception,” Owens seamlessly transitioned into an ad readout for the Catholic prayer app Hallow....

If Carlson and Owens have proven anything, it’s that conspiracies are big business.

After being fired by The Daily Wire in March 2024 for her antisemitic rhetoric, Owens relaunched independently on YouTube in June 2024 and began releasing content centered on conspiracy theories, including one video in which she claimed that Kanye West told her Sean “Diddy” Combs was a “fed,” and went on to say that Combs was “clearly being protected by the government.” Owens ended the episode by mocking Jewish responses to the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel as “victim Olympics.”

Last month, her podcast was ranked third, behind Oprah and Joe Rogan, for downloads and views per episode. Podcast metrics platform VidIQ estimates Owens now earns between $163,000 and $489,000 per month from her YouTube channel. (On YouTube, revenue is tied to watch time, which is not publicly disclosed. But a rule of thumb is that a creator’s total watch time is a simple multiple of two variables: how many people click on the video, and the average amount of time each viewer stays.) An analysis by Fortune found that Owens’s podcast sponsorships alone could net between $2 million and $10 million annually. Then there’s her merchandise and fees for speaking engagements, for which she charges $10,000 to $100,000 each. When I sought to confirm her show’s monthly earnings and sponsorship revenue, Owens responded that “estimates are like assholes . . .”

Last year, Carlson got an institutional boost when Fox Corporation acquired Red Seat Ventures, a venture-studio-style company focused on leveraging influential figures on the right. Red Seat provides clients like Carlson, Kelly, and Bill O’Reilly “investment capital, growth strategy, monetization, and skilled management, all of which allows for the rapid launch of new shows and businesses,” according to the company’s website. The acquisition price wasn’t announced, but the deal put Carlson back in business with Fox less than three years after he was pushed out of the network.

Carlson has his namesake YouTube show, as well as The Tucker Carlson Network, which is a subscription-based streaming service which provides ad-free, early access to Carlson’s podcasts, as well additional content. According to estimates by VidIQ, The Tucker Carlson Show has a monthly revenue of between $162,000 and $485,000—or as much as $5.8 million per year.


Slides from a TCN pitch deck obtained by The Free Press offer a rare look at how Carlson sells himself to investors. Carlson is not simply positioning himself as a commentator but as a revenue-driving media asset whose value lies in his ability to hold an audience for extended periods. One slide is titled “Audience Magnet” and claims advertising spend “totaling over $77 million annually.”...

Carlson and Owens typically have roughly two to four sponsors per episode. There are the religion-adjacent advertisers: Magisterium AI, a Catholic church-specific answer engine, has sponsored Owens’s show; and Hallow app, whose investors include J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel, which has advertised on both.

There are the doomsday brands, including two that Carlson has a financial stake in: Battalion Metals, a metals exchange he founded last year alongside his personal “bullion dealer,” Christopher Olson, and Last Country Supply, a “survival essentials” company he recently founded. (Carlson featured Olson on an episode titled “One of America’s Biggest Gold Wholesalers Exposes the Most Common Gold Scam Enslaving the Country.”)

And then there are MAHA-friendly ones, like supplement brands Field of Greens by BrickHouse Nutrition, which advertises with Owens; and Cowboy Colostrum and Beam’s Creatine and Dream products, which advertise on Carlson’s show. Masa Chips is a tortilla chip fried in beef tallow that markets itself both as “the number one chip in all of Erewhon” and Carlson’s “go-to snack.”

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