Column: The Trump administration has a free-speech problem

Yahoo

17-03-2025

I have to wonder: When will Vice President JD Vance condemn his own administration?
Last month, Vance, a self-described foreign policy 'realist' who scorns the practice of describing countries as 'good guys' and 'bad guys,' caused quite a stir at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. He invited controversy, however, not by advocating a more amoral, realpolitik foreign policy but by delivering a finger-wagging, highly moralistic lecture about, among other things, how our allies are insufficiently liberal about free expression. 'In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,' he said more in sorrow than anger.
In an attempt to seem fair-minded, he even acknowledged that America is not perfect. 'And, in the interest of comity, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation.'
Read more: Contributor: The Trump administration schooled Europe on free speech. Why ignore the lesson at home?
The implication, of course, was that his own administration would be an unvarnished advocate for, and defender of, the liberal value of free speech.
Now, I should say that I agree with many of Vance's criticisms of our allies and of the Biden administration. But I think it was bizarre that the man who thinks we should be less judgy about the internal affairs of oppressive regimes chose to sound like a Wilsonian scold to our democratic allies. Suffice it to say that, that just because he was wrong to use that venue to say it, doesn't mean everything he said was wrong.
What's more relevant is that it appears he didn't mean a word of it.
On Friday, Vance's boss, President Trump, addressed the staff of the Department of Justice. A large share of the speech was aimed at relitigating his grievances about past investigations into his conduct.
Read more: Editorial: Free speech or discrimination? Colleges need help drawing the line
The president displayed the rhetorical discipline and analytical precision he's famous for, calling various former officials 'scum' and the like. Of the judges who ruled contrary to his interests, he said, 'It's not even imaginable how corrupt they were.'
And in Trump's view, that corruption is exacerbated by an equally 'really corrupt' media that pressures judges to rule against him. Dubbing the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and 'MSDNC' as 'fake news,' he explained that 'what they do is illegal.'
'It's totally illegal what they do,' he said to the assembled prosecutors in the audience. 'I just hope you can all watch for it, but it's totally illegal.' And again: 'It has to stop. It has to be illegal. It's influencing judges and it's really changing law, and it just cannot be legal. I don't believe it's legal.'
Spoiler: It's legal.
In short, the president told the nation's top federal law enforcement officers, who answer to him, that negative coverage of him is illegal as far as he's concerned and that they should 'watch out' for such illegality.
Read more: Trump opens investigations at three California colleges alleging DEI-based discrimination
But it doesn't end there.
The president, whose campaign website promised to 'end censorship and reclaim free speech,' and who bragged to a joint session of Congress that he 'brought free speech back to America,' has launched a fairly massive effort to punish not just protests on America's college campuses — a cause that arouses some sympathy from me when those protests venture outside the confines of mere speech — but also on school curricula and internal policies.
His Department of Justice sent a threatening letter to a member of Congress who criticized Elon Musk.
The White House has also been scrambling the way the press covers the president, denying the Associated Press access to major events because it won't call the Gulf of Mexico, the body of water Trump renamed Gulf of America, by its new name.
The administration committed to fighting 'misinformation' and partisan 'fake news' has credentialed the most cartoonishly pro-Trump outlets, such as Gateway Pundit, and pillow magnate (and election conspiracy theorist) Mike Lindell's LindellTV. Meanwhile, over the weekend, Trump issued an order shuttering the Voice of America for being 'anti-Trump.' The VOA was founded with the mission to counter propaganda with factual reporting. It started as a bulwark of truth first against Nazis, but later against authoritarian and totalitarian regimes around the globe.
Now, you don't have to disagree with all of these moves. But the pattern is hard to square with a vice president who insisted, mostly backed up by a few anecdotes, that the greatest threat to Europe was 'the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values' — i.e. from free speech values — 'shared by the United States of America.'
@JonahDispatch
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.