Trump bans AP and words he doesn't like. 'Free speech' was never about First Amendment. | Opinion
Barring one of America's largest news organizations from being part of the pool of journalists who cover the president because they aren't using a specific term is a clear First Amendment violation.
Do you all remember how Republicans and enraged right-wing pundits spent the past four years screaming and hollering and foaming at the mouth over “censorship” and the importance of free speech?
Yeah, those folks are all pretty quiet right now while the Trump administration is banning specific words from government websites, aggressively trying to erase transgender people from history and blocking Associated Press reporters from the Oval Office.
Let’s start with that last bit, as it runs so transparently afoul of the First Amendment. On Friday, the White House banned AP reporters from Air Force One and the Oval Office. The reason? The news service has made clear it will continue to identify the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of Mexico,” not the “Gulf of America” as Trump – like a fifth-grader who mistakenly thinks he’s clever – has renamed the body of water.
Free-speech-lover Donald Trump is trying to silence the AP
The AP serves a global audience. President Donald Trump can call the Gulf of Mexico what he wants, but that doesn’t mean the world has to follow suit, and the AP is right to not cave to a faux-patriotic president’s lame-brained attempt at branding.
At a White House briefing last week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “It is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I’m not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that.”
The only fact here is that this is all a bunch of ludicrous hooey.
Barring one of the country’s foundational news organizations from being part of the pool of journalists who cover the president because they aren’t using a specific term is a clear First Amendment violation.
'We have saved free speech in America,' Trump said. LOL!
In a letter to the White House, the AP's senior vice president and executive editor, Julie Pace wrote: “The actions taken by this White House were plainly intended to punish the AP for the content of its speech. It is among the most basic tenets of the First Amendment that the government cannot retaliate against the public or the press for what they say.”
Let’s rewind back to Jan. 23, when Trump addressed the World Economic Forum and said: “On Day 1, I signed an executive order to stop all government censorship. No longer will our government label the speech of our own citizens as misinformation or disinformation, which are the favorite words of censors and those who wish to stop the free exchange of ideas and, frankly, progress. We have saved free speech in America, and we’ve saved it strongly.” That’s a hilarious shot of hypocrisy.
Trump administration erases reference to trans people at Stonewall
Last week, the word “transgender” was removed from the National Park Service’s website for the Stonewall National Monument in New York City.The first sentence on the website was: “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+) person was illegal.”
It is now: “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal.”
Free speech advocates on the right have now censored the letters “T” and “Q” and the “+” symbol.
Erik Bottcher, a city councilman for Greenwich Village, where the monument stands, accurately told The New York Times: “The rebellion at Stonewall would not have happened without trans people. To attempt to erase their existence is utterly shameful.”
'Censorship!'-crying, free-speech Republicans now ban words
So where is Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer, who in 2022, while criticizing the Biden administration for attempting to limit the spread of COVID-19 misinformation online, wrote this with GOP colleagues: “The federal government should not be censoring free speech.” The Trump administration, according to the Popular Information website, has banned an array of words at the National Security Agency, including: racism, anti-racism, bias, diversity, diverse, gender, inclusion, prejudice, pronouns and equality.
I’m sure that must outrage Vice President JD Vance, who said on the campaign trail last year: “I think the fundamental idea here is Republicans believe not in censorship. We believe in free speech and debate. … This whole idea that has taken hold in the far left of this country that if you see a bad idea the way to solve it is to censor it I think it’s ridiculous.”Vance added: “Donald Trump is the candidate of letting us have the debate because he believes in the American people enough to know that if we have a real debate, wisdom is ultimately going to win out. That’s the Donald Trump approach. It’s anti-censorship, and I’m proud to stand with him on it.”
Anybody seen the conservative free speech warriors lately?
Where are you standing now, Vice President Hypocrite?
Perhaps next to John Beauchamp, who in 2022 was the chairman of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater College Republicans and said before a speech by Trump lackey Kellyanne Conway: “What was once the hallowed ground for the formation and sharing of ideals and values has become a place where conservatives like you and I are constantly and frequently finding ourselves up against an ever increasing blockade. A blockade of liberal tactics and smears. We find ourselves shouted down and shut up, but we will not be silenced.” You and your fellow Republicans seem mighty silenced right now, bub.
Where’s the 2017 version of Fox News host Sean Hannity who wailed that "liberal fascism is alive and well in America today. Their goal is simple: They want to shut up and shut down and silence all conservative voices by any means necessary.”
Where are the Fox News hosts and guests who, according to The Washington Post, spent the year 2020 using “some combination of the words ‘silence,’ ‘cancel’ and ‘censor’ more than 4,800 times.”
Trump, Musk and Republicans are hypocritical as the day is long
It looks like Trump and supposed free speech absolutist Elon Musk and all the hysterical conservatives who just moments ago abhorred any form of censorship are now 100% chill with the government banning words. And booting reporters who won’t write exactly what the government orders them to write. And writing an entire swath of Americans out of existence on federal websites.They get mad at attempts to contain racist hate speech and save lives by trying to stop the spread of unhinged lies about a pandemic, or at books that teach actual history and give agency to people who aren't cisgender white men.But they sure are quiet as church mice when it comes to eradicating the word “equality.”What a howling pack of sanctimonious charlatans.
Follow Paste BN columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk