Thursday on CBS’s “The Late Show,” CNN’s Jake Tapper said if citizens lose the freedom to “criticize” their leaders, then we were “no longer the United States of America.”
Tapper said, “Brendan Carr is signaling he wants local media to stop carrying this speech and this speaker that Trump doesn’t approve of. Got it. Got the message. And we saw what happened. This is it’s a direct violation of the First Amendment because it is the government telling companies what to do with the implicit threat of he said, we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way. And they chose the easy way.”
Host Stephen Colbert said, “Has it been politicized before this that you know of?”
Tapper said, “Not to this degree. I have never seen an FCC chairman call for a direct action by local affiliates to do something to remove a speaker and speech that they don’t like. And it’s chilling. And it’s actually the exact opposite of, you know, these were supposedly going to be the free speech champions.”
Colbert said, “That was part of the campaign. They were tired of being censored and that there were free speech absolutists.”
Tapper said, “Listen to this, ‘I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America. Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.’ Donald Trump, January of this year.”
He added, “If we do not have the ability to criticize mock, investigate our leaders, then we are no longer the United States of America.”
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