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This is an adapted excerpt from the Dec. 14 episode of “Ayman.”
If you listened to President-elect Donald Trump and his Republican allies during the campaign, it was clear they were running as the pro-free speech party.
Just one month after his election victory, the so-called free speech candidate is threatening to go after a cornerstone of the First Amendment, the free press.
“I will bring back free speech in America because it’s been taken away,” Trump said at a rally in September. “They’ve taken away your free speech, and the fake news is a threat to this country.”
“Donald Trump is the candidate of the First Amendment,” JD Vance told the crowd at another rally in October. “He’s the candidate of free speech.”
But just one month after his election victory, the so-called free speech candidate is threatening to go after a cornerstone of the First Amendment, the free press: “They [the media] like us much better now, I think,” Trump said recently at the New York Stock Exchange after Time magazine named him person of the year. “If they don’t, then we’ll just have to take them on again, and we don’t want to do that,” Trump added.
If that wasn’t enough, likely members of Trump’s incoming administration have also attacked free speech. Starting with Kash Patel, whom Trump would like to lead the FBI. “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said on Steve Bannon’s podcast. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”
Then there’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department. Upon endorsing Trump, Kennedy argued it was the Democrats, not the Republicans, who were the ones silencing people they disagreed with. However, Kennedy is now indicating that, if confirmed, he’ll likely fire around 600 employees at the National Institutes of Health who don’t agree with his vision.
Don’t forget Trump’s first buddy, billionaire Elon Musk. The owner of X, who will be in charge of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, fancies himself a free speech absolutist. Musk said earlier this year on his social media platform that “without free speech, all is lost.”
As one conservative lawyer familiar with Trump’s plans for the media warned in that report, ‘It’ll be brutal.’
But during his tenure as the owner of X, the company has suspended the accounts of journalists critical of him or his Republican allies like Vance. And now, despite never being elected by anyone, Musk is threatening Senate Republicans with a primary challenger backed by him if they don’t fall in line and support Trump’s nominees.
Patel, Kennedy and Musk have given a clear warning to any potential Trump dissidents: Fall in line or face the consequences.
And it’s all in service of Trump, a man who has called for the jailing of anyone who desecrates the American flag. Someone who has threatened to go after the broadcast licenses of outlets over coverage he doesn’t like. Someone who, according to Rolling Stone, is reportedly planning to escalate his war on leakers and the press using media subpoenas, communications seizures, whistleblower prosecutions and legal threats against news outlets.
As one conservative lawyer familiar with Trump’s plans for the media warned in that report, “It’ll be brutal.”
The idea that Trump and his allies are free speech champions was always absurd. For them, free speech means they get to shout the loudest and silence everyone who disagrees with them.
Allison Detzel contributed.