Speech isn't just up for debate, it's under direct assault from the POTUS, all in defense of himself against criticism

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com
Trump: "When you have networks where I won an election in counties -- I guess it's 2,600 to 525, that's called a landslide times two -- when you have that kind of popularity or voter support, and yet 97% of the newscasts are against me ... I think that's really illegal."

Acyn @Acyn
Karl: You've said you restored free speech in America. Is that free speech including for people who are harshly critical of you?

Trump: I've become immune to it… That's why your network paid me $16 million.. That's why CBS paid me a lot of money too. And that's why I sued The New York Times

Karl: The judge threw it out

Trump: I’m winning…. And for you to stand there and act so innocent and ask me a question like that… The reason I won that lawsuit is you were proven to be dishonest. You’re not a wonderful person. You’re a terrible reporter. You know it and I know it.


...I'm trying to wrap my head around this sordid spectacle of the President of the United States measuring and defining free speech in America according to how thin his own skin is in the face of media criticism; critical reporting which every modern president has endured from the press.

It's clear that the entire administration's assault on the press and speech is about a totalitarian pursuit where dissent against the government is to be banned, and only the central government line is allowed, like in the Pentagon order today that journalists sign a fealty pledge that they'll only 'look at' what the military and government want them to see and report on.

Trump's efforts and complains are not at all about 'free speech,' which is supposed to be guaranteed by our Constitution, it's about stifling dissenting speech which this administration intends to unilaterally and self-servingly decide whether it upsets or threatens theirs and the government's interests.


NPR: w/(DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE)

President Trump said he brought back free speech. Some of his actions contradict that

FOLKENFLIK: ... I think that on the right there's been a belief in cancel culture, the idea that people could be targeted, taken down for things that were found to be offensive, particularly by folks on the left. There's clearly a new administration effort to uncork what has been - in some quarters been viewed as offensive speech and to kind of embrace and celebrate it. But in reality, I think what we're seeing is the desire to control the flow of information to the public from kind of a pro-MAGA, pro-Trump point of view, rather than to say that, hey, we welcome the fractious free flow of opinion and information from all sides.

It's been an article of faith on the right, particularly among the MAGA right, that social media platforms have been really suppressing conservative speech. And one of the elements they point to is what happened during the pandemic. And during that time, you saw Biden administration officials really lobbying these social media platforms to tamp down on unfounded claims. And they did. Some of those claims turned out to be not utterly unfounded - the lab leak theory, for example. We just don't know at this time. Back then, it was dismissed. So that was taken as a real way in which Biden had performed some sort of censorship.

What Trump is doing is much less subtle than what happened under the Biden term. You're seeing Trump really tamp down on people's ability to speak freely pretty bluntly. One is the question of nonpartisan government officials speaking about their expertise, about the kind of research and data they've collected, and then the deep cutting back on what kinds of research they can conduct and talk about to the public. And then you're seeing private institutions being essentially pressured through the force of the government pocketbook against charting their own course on values on areas that they want to pursue for fear that they may cross the government and lose the funding.

...every new administration is entitled to set its own priorities. It's why we have elections. That said, the coercion of speech and the kind of demands for fealty through rhetoric, it's not always clear that it's legal. One example, The Associated Press is suing Trump. He had them tossed out of these press pools that have been used for a century to kind of share coverage of the president and other major officials in sort of constricted circumstances because they weren't willing to call the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, his preferred term. The White House says, look, it's not a right, it's a privilege. But a Trump-appointed judge was somewhat sympathetic to what the AP had to say there. Even so, many folks aren't waiting around to find out. For example, PBS scrubbed DEI from its site, as have some major universities, in fear of the federal government coming down hard on them. And, you know, there is this tension between Trump's desire for kind of a control of the message from the White House, from the Oval Office, colliding with the - at least the spirit and perhaps even the law as embodied in the Bill of Rights.

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/06/nx-s1-5317739/president-trump-said-he-brought-back-free-speech-some-of-his-actions-contradict-that

[AZJonnie]

1. Imagine if Bill Clinton was found civilly liable for forcibly penetrating a women's vagina without her consent

and sued Fox News, objecting to the word "rape" being used to describe it, on the grounds that the jury actually only found him liable for "sexual abuse". Imagine Fox settled for 5% of what Clinton was asking for in the case (to be donated to Clintons POTUS library), almost surely because that amount was less than it would cost them to argue it in court. IOW, a frivolous "shakedown" lawsuit. And then went around later falsely claiming he "won the case because Fox was so dishonest" (when in fact it was a settlement, not a victory again, for 5% of the requested amount, for referring to sexual abuse as rape), and calling individual ABC reporters (not even the ones who said blow job) "not good people" and "terrible reporters" in the aftermath.

Remember that the starting point is that he was found legally liable for sexual abuse in the first place, and his victim awarded 10's of Millions of $$$ by the court, in a jury trial.

The Right would've absolutely lost their minds, and the Left would ex-communicated him the moment that verdict was handed down.

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2. I remember they did lose their minds

...back in the day when Lindsay Graham sounding like Foghorn Leghorn was moralizing in the impeachment hearings about Bill Clinton's sex life while apparently hiding his own in a closet.

And remember, Clinton refused to tell all about his affair to the conservative prick that deposed him. "I did not have sex with that woman" was the extent of it.

And he did pay a civil penalty for it, as I recall, including being disbarred from practicing law in Arkansas for 5 years with the option of reapplying, and a $25,000 fine.

[AZJonnie]

3. I did not have sexual relations ...

It was legalese, the law in DC or something defined sexual relations as intercourse which he apparently didn't do. So I mean that's somewhat close in one sense to IQ47, but no woman was fu**ing R***D so it was REALLY different in the most important way

Yeah, to a person, the Reight exercises absolutely zero intellectual integrity. Ever. And no values, and no morals. And lying is part of their genome.