Trump “Brings Back Free Speech” By [Checks Notes] Threatening To Imprison Protestors And Expose Journalist Sources

It is almost difficult to believe this is a real thing that happened with the President of the United States, but here’s what actually happened on Tuesday. In the morning, Donald Trump threatened to imprison protesters and defund any university that allows certain protests. Then, that same evening, he stood before Congress and declared — with apparently zero irony — that he had “stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America.”

You might think this whiplash-inducing contrast is just standard political hypocrisy. But it’s actually something much more terrifying: it’s part of a calculated strategy to redefine “free speech” as “speech I like” while using government power to punish speech I don’t like. The crazy part isn’t just that he’s doing it — it’s that he’s doing it so blatantly, while the very same backers who claimed they supported him for his views on “free speech” cheer this on.

Once again, we need to be explicit and direct here, because it’s all that matters. Donald Trump has not “stopped all government censorship,” because there really was no real government censorship. Instead, he has repeatedly engaged in and encouraged his administration to engage in one of the most aggressive and problematic campaigns of suppressing and chilling speech this country has ever seen.

Let’s go through this bit by bit.

Trump’s claim stems from his executive order on “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship” — a solution to a problem that never existed. How do we know? Because Trump’s own Supreme Court appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, thoroughly demolished these claims of government censorship just last year.

While MAGA supporters had convinced themselves that the Biden administration was secretly ordering social media companies to censor conservative views, the Supreme Court took one look at the actual evidence and exposed it as pure fantasy.

Reading the ruling is like watching Justice Barrett swat down conspiracy theories like flies at a picnic. “No evidence” appears so frequently it could be the ruling’s catchphrase. No evidence of CDC-influenced censorship. No evidence of White House pressure. No evidence of FBI interference. No evidence that Facebook changed policies on government orders:

There is therefore no evidence to support the States’ allegation that Facebook restricted the state representative pursuant to the CDC-influenced policy….

But neither the timing nor the platforms line up (nor, in Dr. Kheriarty’s case, does the content), so the plaintiffs cannot show that these restrictions were traceable to the White House officials. In fact, there is no record evidence that White House officials ever communicated at all…

This evidence does not support the conclusion that Hoft’s past injuries are likely traceable to the FBI or CISA….

There is no evidence that the White House asked Facebook to censor every user who reposts a member of the disinformation dozen, nor did Facebook change its policies to do so.

There’s more, but you get the idea.

So Trump’s executive order “stopped” imaginary censorship while enabling very real suppression of speech. His FCC chief Brendan Carr now routinely threatens media organizations over their editorial choices.

But Trump’s real innovations in censorship are just getting started. His administration has launched a systematic campaign to eliminate discussions of diversity and inclusion, reaching far beyond government into private business. And last week, he announced plans to “create some NICE NEW LAW!!!” specifically designed to sue authors and publishers who dare to criticize him using anonymous sources.

If you can’t see that, it’s a Truth Social post saying:

As a President who is being given credit for having the Best Opening Month of any President in history, quite naturally, here come the Fake books and stories with the so-called “anonymous,” or “off the record,” quotes. At some point I am going to sue some of these dishonest authors and book publishers, or even media in general, to find out whether or not these “anonymous sources” even exist, which they largely do not. They are made up, defamatory fiction, and a big price should be paid for this blatant dishonesty. I’ll do it as a service to our Country. Who knows, maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!

Let’s be clear about what this means: Trump wants to create legal tools that would let him force journalists to reveal their sources or face ruinous lawsuits. This isn’t just about suppressing critical books — it’s about making sure no insider ever dares speak to the press about his actions again. The chilling effect would be immediate and devastating — precisely what Trump and those in his orbit want.

The MAGA faithful love to pretend that “anonymous sources” means “made up quotes.” But any journalist knows that fabricating sources is a career-ending offense — just ask Stephen Glass or Jayson Blair, whose names are now synonymous with journalistic fraud. The ability to protect legitimate anonymous sources isn’t just a nicety — it’s fundamental to investigative journalism and government accountability.

Trump knows this. His proposed law isn’t about preventing fake quotes — it’s about ensuring that anyone who might expose his actions faces not just legal harassment, but the very real threat of retaliation from his most rabid supporters. It’s a calculated attempt to ensure that the next Watergate-style revelation never sees daylight.

But Trump wasn’t done. Just hours before he claimed to Congress that he had “brought back free speech,” he had threatened to imprison and deport protestors while promising to strip federal funding from any university that allows protests:

If you can’t see that, it’s a post from Trump saying:

All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

This threat manages to violate multiple constitutional principles at once. But the sheer levels of nonsense here require so much effort to peel back each layer of madness.

First, the Constitution gives Congress, not the President, control over federal spending. This isn’t obscure legal theory — it’s basic separation of powers that even high school civics students understand.

More fundamentally, this is a direct assault on core First Amendment rights of expression and assembly. When Trump says “illegal protests,” he means protests he doesn’t like — whether they’re pro-Palestine demonstrations or (more likely) the anti-Trump protests he knows are coming. The “illegal” framing is just cover for targeting specific viewpoints — exactly what the First Amendment prohibits.

Now here is where you might expect that all the people who were so concerned about “free speech on campus” to speak up. Remember all those self-proclaimed “free speech warriors” who spent the last few years writing endless think pieces about how a student protest against a conservative speaker represented The Death Of Campus Free Speech?

Funny story: they seem absolutely delighted by actual government censorship of campus speech. Take Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, which has built an entire media empire on breathless warnings about campus censorship. Their take on Trump’s threat to literally imprison protesters? An “exclusive” gleefully reporting that the GSA is already implementing Trump’s threats, preparing to strip Columbia of $5 billion in funding unless it shuts down protests they deem “antisemitic.”

It’s almost like they never actually cared about free speech on campus at all. They just cared about which speech was being challenged.

The strategy by Trump here is bone-chillingly clear: threaten universities’ survival through financial blackmail while simultaneously threatening students with life-altering punishments for exercising their constitutional rights. It’s a two-pronged attack designed to make universities preemptively shut down protests and make students too afraid to speak out.

This is what actual government censorship looks like. Not imaginary pressure on social media companies that even Trump’s own Supreme Court appointee dismissed, but real threats of imprisonment, deportation, and financial ruin for engaging in constitutionally protected political speech.

So when Trump stood before Congress mere hours after issuing these threats and claimed he “stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech,” he wasn’t just lying — he was executing a deliberate strategy to destroy the very concept of truth itself. By boldly claiming the exact opposite of reality, he’s trying to make people give up on the idea that facts matter at all.

And that’s the real threat here. Not just the actual censorship (though that’s bad enough), but the attempt to make reality itself negotiable. Because once truth becomes whatever the person in power says it is, actual free speech becomes impossible.

The traditional ending here would be something like “we can’t let him get away with it.” But that’s not quite right. The point isn’t just to stop him — it’s to preserve our ability to recognize and speak truth at all. Even when — especially when — the most powerful people in the country are trying to convince us that up is down, black is white, and censorship is freedom.