For the past decade or more, the American right has been on a crusade to end what they see as the scourge of “cancel culture.”They have railed against firing people for what they say in the classroom and boardroom or for things they posted years ago as teenagers on social media. They ranted that no one should lose a job simply for expressing an unpopular opinion, a fate which they believed was happening to conservatives throughout society. This has been a fundamental organizing principle on the MAGA right as they fulminated against leftist “woke” ideology they believed was being forced down the throats of average Americans who were intimidated into going along lest they be shunned or expelled or fired.
This was always a bit much. The right has its own very long history of “canceling” those with whom they disagree. Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee back in the 1940s and 50s successfully ruined the lives of many people who were suspected of being members (or simply member-curious) of the Communist Party, which was not illegal. In the lead up to the Iraq war, dissenters were warned to be careful of what they said lest they be seen as terrorist sympathizers. Radio stations famously renounced the country act “The Dixie Chicks” for telling their audience they were ashamed that President George Bush was from Texas. And in recent years we’ve seen a spate of book banning and repression in the classroom by right wing school boards and politicians.
But during the grievance driven Trump era, complaints among the right reached fever pitch as cultural upheavals like “Me Too” and “Black Lives Matter” fed their resentment over social changes they believed had gone too far. And nothing exercised them more than the idea that “hate speech” could be sanctioned either informally or by the government. As the late Charlie Kirk wrote on X in May of 2024, “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”
Ironically, in the wake of the assassination, there has been tsunami of calls and activity to shut down “hate speech” in the name of the free speech defender, Charlie Kirk. Many high profile Republicans, including the Vice President have called for people to dox those who have said negative things about Kirk on social media and contact their employees to have them fired. Even the alleged principled libertarians are calling for a crackdown.
Trump’s right hand man Stephen Miller asserts that there is a vast left wing terrorist network that is destroying everything Americans hold dear. Appearing with Vice President JD Vance who was podcasting under Kirk’s name in the White House this week, he vowed:
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again. For the American people, it will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
He has plenty of company. Attorney General Pam Bondi said earlier this week that the Department of Justice plans to target people who have engaged in hate speech and she put employers on notice that they will be held legally accountable if their employees refuse to serve people who wish to valorize Charlie Kirk. She later had to walk those threats back after being schooled by MAGA influencers that the First Amendment still exists. (She’s only the top government lawyer in the country, you can’t expect her to know everything.)
Donald Trump has never really believed in all this free speech folderol. I don’t think anyone can credibly assert that he is a man of deeply held principles about liberty and justice (except as they pertain to himself.) From his first campaign in 2015 he’s often said that one person or another should not be “allowed” to say things he disapproves of and it’s only surprising that he’s held back as much as he has from abusing his power as president to clamp down on the media.
He’s not holding back any longer. He’s been leading the charge against “the left” in the wake of Kirk’s shooting, but is reserving most of his ire toward the press. Having successfully extorted $15 million from ABC and $16 million from CBS’s parent company Paramount through absurd lawsuits that legal experts say could never have won in court, he’s now taken to suing any media outfit he believes has not been properly reverent toward his personal magnificence. He sued the Wall St. Journal for $10 billion (yes with a “b”) and now, using what seems to be nothing more than an extended Truth Social post, he’s filed a defamation suit against the NY Times for $15 billion because they keep criticizing him and are failing to acknowledge his vast success. (This is a common lament from Trump these days — he’s very upset that everyone’s talking about things other than his greatness.)
The suit has to be read to be believed. It’s hard to fathom that any lawyer would put his or her name to it. In fact, it’s almost certainly nothing more than a sop to appease Trump because the NY Times, unlike the other media companies he’s blackmailed, is just a newspaper company not a huge conglomerate with business before the government so Trump doesn’t have the same leverage. They’ve said they will not settle and there’s little reason to think they would.
But Trump is on a tear, telling an Australian reporter who asked him about all the money he’s making while in office to be quiet and menacingly asserting that he’s bad for his country because Australia wants to get along with him. (Nice little country you have there…) Then he insulted ABC’s Jonathan Karl for bringing up Bondi’s promise to go after people for hate speech saying “We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they’ll have to go after you.”
It would be easy to just write that stuff off as “crazy old Trump being Trump.” But when you put it in the context of what his entire administration has been saying for the past week it takes on a much more ominous cast. Are they all just reacting to the loss of their young leader and acting out in anger or is that event being used as a pretext to go to the next level of autocracy and use the government to punish their political opponents and the media as Stephen Miller vowed to do?
It appears to be the latter. When CBS’s Stephen Colbert was fired after Paramount completed its merger with Skydance Last July, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings… I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!” His orders were clear.
Yesterday his FCC chairman Brendan Carr went on a podcast and claimed that Kimmel had said “the sickest thing possible” about Charlie Kirk on his show and warned, “when we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” (Kimmel had said the “MAGA gang” was denying they had anything to do with it and was “trying to score political points” and he made mock of Trump’s behavior.)
What Carr seemed to be implying with that mob boss talk was that the FCC would not approve a big merger between some of ABC’s stations if they didn’t cancel Kimmel, a tactic they also used to extort that $16 million from Paramount. The stations immediately complied followed shortly by ABC/Disney announcing that Kimmel had been”suspended indefinitely.” Carr sent CNN’s Brian Stelter a celebration text.
As a private company, ABC has the right to fire anyone they choose but this interference by the FCC is encroaching on the First Amendment. However, the media companies have to be willing to defend themselves and so far, the only one to step up is the NY Times. They may be our last hope for preserving freedom of speech as we’ve known it.
Salon