The Fox News host pointed to an Axios report stating the service was launched under the assumption it could tap into 29 million “CNN super fans” who would be eager to pay for the service. Internal estimates also posited the existence of two other “buckets”: 24 million “news and non-fiction SVOD (subscription video on demand) fans,” and 36 million “global news consumers.”

Carlson mockingly read the figures aloud.

“So think about those numbers for a second,” he said. “CNN convinced itself it had 29 million super fans. That’s even less plausible than 81 million votes in a presidential election. And it turned out to be completely disconnected from reality. In the end, CNN+ got about 10,000 viewers. Why? Because people don’t really wanna pay to watch that crap, to be called bigots or learn about trans-senior citizens. It has nothing to do with their lives. They know for a fact they won’t improve them.”