What GOP trolls like Carlson and the like learned from Limbaugh and figured out a long ago is that in entertainment it doesn’t matter how many people hate you, what matters is how many people love you. For that matter, non-political types like Howard Stern figured this out as well. It's not accounting. It doesn't matter if you have a negative balance. If 10 million people love you and 50 million hate you, 10 million people will watch your nasty show and buy your cheap, shitty ass book. The 50 million who hate you don’t un-buy your book. Conversely, if you’re inoffensive, (And in todays RW media - truthful) 0 people love you and 0 people hate you; it’s a better balance but how does that make you money?
If he doesn’t offend people and lie, Carlson is nothing. If he does, Trumpists and the like will pay attention to him; that everyone here thinks he a complete shitstain troll isn’t relevant to his income. As far as social media algorithms are concerned the 10 million people that love you and the 50 million people that hate you are the same. All Twitter sees is 60 million people that feel passionately about you, and that’s enough to get richer and you shown to even more people. These people are performers doing a performance of performative hate for money.