Well, here I go again, sitting down at my laptop to exercise my 1st-Amendment ‘right’ to free speech – the same ‘right’ probably being exercised right now by Donald Trump. In fact, the only difference between what I’m doing and what Donald is doing is that what I say will go on my Medium blog, what Trump says will go on his Truth Social website.
But if I want to write something about how so-and-so is a scumbag, nobody’s going to get upset. On the other hand, if Trump puts something on his website about how the daughter of the judge in his hush-money trial in New York is a scum bag, he could wind up in jail.
How come him but not me? Since when does the 1st Amendment all of a sudden only apply when you’re not about to be facing a judge and a jury in a court of law to defend yourself against a criminal charge?
Actually, I would think that the so-called ‘right’ to free speech should apply much more rigorously to someone who is about to be identified as the defendant in a criminal case. I mean, wasn’t the whole reason we wrote the Constitution because we were sick and tired of being in legal situations where we had no ‘rights’ against a Monarch who had all the ‘rights?’
You may think I’m just playing around with a bit of hyperbole because I’m trying to prove a point. But that’s not all I’m trying to do.
What I’m really talking about is that for all his bullshit and bluster, what makes Trump to appear to be such a threat and the real reason he’s getting a gag wrapped around his mouth is the fact that every fucking time he opens his mouth, the Fake News media amplifies and spreads whatever he says.
I recall back in the 2016 Presidential campaign that she (whose name I refuse to mention) and her fawning, incompetent staff kvetched and whined endlessly about all the ‘free’ advertising that Trump was getting with those daily interviews on Fox News.
But Fox viewers were going to vote GOP even if their candidate was Donald Duck. The real dividend for Trump when it came to getting his name out there was the behavior of the Fake News, which dutifully reported every, stupid thing he said as if what he said made any difference at all!
Now I can understand the slavish behavior of the Fake News media while Trump’s fat ass was parked behind the real Resolute desk. But once he scampered off to Mar-a-Lago with his private archive of classified documents, why pay attention to him anymore?
And yet, not only did the Fake News continue to give him endless coverage, in particular allowing him to maintain the fiction of why he was still the President because the 2020 election was rigged, but when he opened up his own media channel, the Fake News dutifully reproduced his daily comments the same way they previously amplified his social media nonsense before he was thrown off of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in 2021.
Now that Trump’s good buddy, that asshole Elon Musk, has restored Trump’s Twitter account, I’m willing to bet you that if Trump wins the 2024 election and returns to the White House in 2025, he won’t give one rat’s damn whether Truth Social becomes stillborn or somehow survives.
Because when you have an entire, national media that hangs on and then blasts out every word you say, why bother to spend your own money or use your time amplifying the power and influence of your voice?
Which brings us back to the gag order imposed on Trump going into his trial on charges that he committed 34 felonies in a scheme to cover up payments to a hooker who allows herself to be identified in the Fake Media as some kind of movie star. Now the fact that she ‘starred’ in porn movies, so what?
My take on all this is that what we really need is a gag order on the Fake Media when it comes to their coverage of Trump. And since ‘freedom of the press’ is another one of those ‘rights’ guaranteed by the Constitution, the Fake Media should impose this gag order on themselves.
But the odds of that happening are about as good as the odds that I will stick to my current diet for longer than another couple of weeks.
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