Trump Announces Plan to Deal with 'Censorship Cartel' - It Would Happen Hours Into His Inauguration
Former President Donald Trump has made a major policy announcement about what he intends to do to protect political free speech if he wins the 2024 election for president, and it is big.
Trump said Thursday that he intends to ban the federal government from using the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” to describe domestic political speech if he wins a second term in the White House, according to the New York Post.
“If we don’t have free speech,” Trump said in a video posted to his Truth Social account, “then we just don’t have a free country.”
The former president said the “Twitter Files” being released by Elon Musk have “confirmed that a sinister group of deep state bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people.”
“The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed — and it must happen immediately,” Trump said in the video.
Strong free speech platform for 2024 just announced by Trump:
-Banning the Federal Government from policing lawful domestic speech.
-Firing any Federal Bureaucrat who has directly or indirectly engaged in censorship.
-Barring federal funds for universities that censor speech. pic.twitter.com/yoaCtZpYNw— Andrew Surabian (@Surabees) December 15, 2022
He also said he would place severe limits on Section 230 legal protections for platforms that don’t treat political speech with neutrality.
Trump added that on his first day in office, he would prohibit federal policing of lawful domestic free speech in cooperation with Big Tech.
“Within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business or person, to censor, limit, categorize or impede the lawful speech of American citizens,” he said.
The former president then delivered a shot over the bow of the corrupt federal officials who have used their power to attack Americans’ free speech.
“I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as ‘mis-‘ or ‘dis-information,'” Trump said. “And I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship — directly or indirectly — whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are.”
The move would find favor from some on both sides of the political aisle, the Post said. The left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union and groups on the right have maintained that the government must be barred from coordinating with Big Tech to censor domestic speech.
Trump also said the U.S. needs a “Digital Bill of Rights” that “should include a right to digital due process — in other words, government officials should need a court order to take down online content, not send information requests such as the FBI was sending to Twitter.”
He also said his rules would require social media companies to inform users of why they were being shadow banned or restricted.
“In addition, all users over the age of 18 should have the right to opt out of content moderation and curation entirely, and receive an unmanipulated stream of information if they so choose,” the former president said.
Trump was famously banned from Twitter while he was a sitting president, and his posts were deemed “disinformation.”
This is an important policy announcement that will appeal to all Americans who value free discourse in the digital public square.
Big Tech has been trouncing on free speech for far too long. And so far, like Elon Musk, Trump is one of the few bold enough to move to address these attacks on our rights.
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