Tucker Carlson is back in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. But where has he been?

Tucker Carlson was fired from Fox News at the height of his powers. He was the face of the most-watched cable news show in the country, with an audience that included presidents, former presidents, hate-watching liberals, rank-and-file conservatives and every Republican lawmaker under the sun. He was even considered a potential presidential candidate.

Ten months on from his ignominious departure, none of those things are still true. Carlson is still producing the kind of content that led the New York Times to suggest that his Fox show “may be the most racist show in the history of cable news” — albeit for a different kind of audience on Elon Musk’s ‘X’ — but he does not command the same authority or attention.

That is, perhaps, until now. The far-right agitator announced on Tuesday that he would interview Russian president Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine, following years of heaping effusive praise on one of the world’s leading jailors of journalists.

Anyone not glued to the internet in the intervening time between his departure from Fox News and landing at the steps of the Kremlin may be wondering where Carlson has been all this time.

Here is a brief rundown.

Tucker Carlson found success on Fox by going further than any of his predecessors beyond the bounds of acceptability. From his primetime perch, he spewed bigotry, parroted white nationalist talking points and promoted conspiracies and falsehoods from behind a facade of journalistic inquiry.

After many years at the top spot, he left Fox News in a cloud of scandal and lawsuits. The abrupt decision to fire its top-rated host was said to have come directly from Rupert Murdoch in April last year.

The network said in a statement that it had “agreed to part ways”