Once the Big Media Players Are Properly Aligned or Killed, MAGA Free Speech Will Reign

 

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“What [Trump] wants to do is make sure that speech or beliefs that are critical of him have less opportunity to be expressed, that speech or beliefs that are praising him have more ability to be out there, and to the extent that people are saying, doing, believing, reading things that he doesn’t approve of, he would like to shut that down and is taking actions to do so.” 

 Kate Oakley, senior director of legal policy at the pro-LGBTQ+ Human Rights Campaign

If you recall my recent blog – To MAGA, There Are No Frenemies – you can easily understand that there is no such thing as the “loyal” opposition, legitimate political dialogue… and those who criticize Trump or his policies are enemies facing serious retribution. Those casting the need to eliminate liberal media, to restrain what they say, to purge liberal commentators (bye, CNN’s Jim Acosta for example) and to threaten their licenses or corporate existence, are content to live in this badly named era of “free speech” according to Trump.

Effectively, Trump is overwhelming the systems with executive orders that violate contrary statutes or constitutional provisions. For example, his attempted “freeze” of congressionally passed spending effectively usurps the power uniquely granted to Congress in Article 8, Section 8 to raise taxes and allocate expenditures. Up to the Nixon era, various presidents tested the limits of that constitutional provision by refusing to spend what Congress enacted. “The practice peaked under Nixon, who impounded billions lawmakers had appropriated for matters like highway spending and pollution control. In response, Congress in 1974 sought to restore its power of the purse by enacting a law called the Impoundment Control Act.” NYTimes, January 28th. A federal court order blocked that Trump effort… but what happens if Trump defies the federal courts?

As if it were an actual branch of government, media has become our national watchdog, containing or exposing corruption and excesses of the branches of government as noted above. And one of the immutable parts of installing an autocracy is quickly to muzzle the free press. Whether it was King George III during the pre-Revolutionary War era here, Hitler’s Germany or Orban’s reformed Hungary, autocrats eliminate the free press very early in their turning the government solely to their ends. Will the Supreme Court support the First Amendment assertion of a free press? And if it does, will Trump accept that result?

The MAGA premise is that there is a liberal bias in most of our mainstream media, and therefore there is de facto censorship against conservatives. That the vast majority of conspiracy theories emanate from conservative efforts, most susceptible to failing fact-checking, Republicans have targeted even the most neutral fact checking as “censorship.” Well, Trump used that word, but as Kevin Rector of the January 28th Los Angeles Times notes, explaining the Biden administration’s efforts at eliminating election level mis-and dis-information: “In one of his first acts in office, President Trump issued an executive order promising to end government censorship and restore free speech.

“The order accused the outgoing Biden administration of harassing social media companies and violating the rights of ordinary Americans ‘under the guise’ of combating disinformation online, and said federal resources would no longer be used to ‘unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.’.. The order [also] echoed a recurring theme from Trump’s campaign — that liberals across the federal government are censoring conservative voices to advance their own ‘woke’ agenda — and [this] immediately resonated with his followers.

“‘This order is a critical step to ensure the government cannot dictate what speech is permissible or weaponize private entities to enforce censorship,’ said Mark Trammell of the Center for American Liberty, a conservative rights group founded by California attorney Harmeet K. Dhillon, Trump’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

“However, many others said they found Trump’s order absurd — both because of his long track record of attacking speech he doesn’t like, and because of his new administration’s simultaneous efforts to muzzle people it disagrees with, including journalists, federal health officials, teachers, diplomats, climate scientists and the LGBTQ+ community.

“‘Let’s not be naive,’ said Hadar Harris, the Washington managing director of PEN America, which has advocated for free speech in the U.S. for more than a century. ‘While some of President Trump’s flurry of executive orders pay lip service to free speech, in reality they frame a frontal assault against it, dictating the terms of allowable expression and identities, demanding political loyalty from civil servants, and threatening retaliation against dissent in ways that could cast a broad chill on free expression well beyond the halls of government.’”

Trust me, right after the election, the most powerful owners of big media began kowtowing to Trump with massive donations to the inauguration. These “protect my asset” sycophants knew what was coming and rapidly backed off embracing media neutrality or any liberal bias. Journalists were fired or isolated. The big-media individuals pictured above were provided with very strategic places on the dais where Trump was sworn in. Billionaires are accepting Trump’s power over them… even those running our formerly free press. Bona fide fact-checking is not censorship

I’m Peter Dekom, and with Trump’s pressure on Senators to do exactly as he directs plus his attempt to deprive Congress of its constitutional mandate, it is unsurprising that a truly free press – unwilling to be Trump’s absolute and unquestioning supporters – simply has to be contained or eliminated under MAGA doctrine.