I Counted Trump’s Censorship Attempts. Here’s What I Found.
“We took the freedom of speech away.”
That was part of President Trump’s explanation in October of his executive order that purports to criminalize burning the American flag. Though his words fail as a constitutional rationale, they inadvertently distill many of his efforts at smothering dissent during the past 11 months.
Since returning to office, Mr. Trump and his administration have tried to undermine the First Amendment, suppress information that he and his supporters don’t like and hamstring parts of the academic, legal and private sectors through lawsuits and coercion — to flood the zone, as his ally Steve Bannon might say.
Some examples are well known, such as when ABC briefly took Jimmy Kimmel off the air after Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, objected to a reference in one of Mr. Kimmel’s monologues about the killing of Charlie Kirk. Other examples received less attention, but by my count, this year there were about 200 instances of administration attempts at censorship, nearly all of which I outline in a new report.
Mr. Trump’s playbook isn’t random. It employs several recurring modes of attack.
Related Knowledge Center: The White House vs. the press
Whether it’s the Des Moines Register’s publication of an unfavorable election poll, a routine edit of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, or the Associated Press’s decision in its authoritative stylebook to continue to use “Gulf of Mexico,” Donald Trump and the White House have used executive authority and legal reprisals in an effort to punish and suppress press coverage that runs contrary to the administration’s preferred narratives.
Democracy and politics | Signalgate | The CBS submission | Voiceless America
Related Knowledge Center: Free speech and public protest
The First Amendment is facing challenging times: Crackdowns on campus protests prompted both-sides claims of intolerance. Attempts to head off dangerous health misinformation have been characterized as violations of free speech. Donald Trump is publicly punishing news outlets that deviate from his administration’s version of events while privately suing some outlets into submission.
The White House vs. the press | Voiceless America