CLAIM: Obama cares about free speech and is standing up against the Trump administration’s supposed censorship.
VERDICT: FALSE. Obama not only attacked Fox News, but encouraged social media censorship as recently as 2022.
Former President Barack Obama claimed last week to be a champion of free speech against what he said were threats from President Donald Trump — ignoring his own history of support for censorship and attacking alternative media.
Obama delivered remarks at Hamilton College in New York, and made the following claim:
I’m more deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech [sic]. I am more troubled by the idea that a White House can say to law firms if you represent parties that we don’t like [sic] we’re going to pull all our business or or bar you from representing people effectively. That kind of behavior is contrary to the the basic compact we have as Americans. Imagine if I had done any of this … Imagine if I had pulled Fox News’s credentials from the White House press corps — you’re laughing, but no, that — this is what’s happening.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has already dealt with Obama’s claim that deporting foreign students who engage in antisemitic and radical protests is a matter of “free speech”: “If you told us that’s what you intended to do when you came to America, we would have never let you in.”
Obama’s claim about law firms is also absurd, and ignores the fact that Trump has focused on those firms that engaged in lawfare against the political opposition, including the false “Russia collusion” hoax. (Notably, Obama never defended Trump or Republicans from Democrat attempts to bully lawyers and law firms that dared to represent conservatives.)
But it is Obama’s claim about Fox News that was the most egregious, because he specifically targeted Fox News when he was president. As left-leaning FactCheck.org noted in 2018 — when Obama made similar, misleading claims:
Former President Barack Obama stood up for a free press in his first political speech of the 2018 campaign season, but he engaged in a bit of revisionist history when it came to his administration’s dealings with Fox News.
“It shouldn’t be Democratic or Republican to say that we don’t threaten the freedom of the press because they say things or publish stories we don’t like,” Obama said in a Sept. 7 speech in Illinois. “I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me threaten to shut them down or call them enemies of the people.”
The Democratic president did more than complain. His administration at times took action against the cable network. The Obama Justice Department surveilled one of Fox News’ reporters, and a White House spokesman acknowledged excluding Fox News from interviews.
Worse, Obama actually encouraged censorship of conservative voices. In a speech at Stanford University in 2022, he declared: “The First Amendment is a check on the power of the state. It doesn’t apply to private companies like Facebook and Twitter.”
He added: “While content moderation can limit the distribution of clearly dangerous content, it doesn’t go far enough.”
The Obama administration also backed efforts by Muslim governments to suppress free speech, including criticism of Islam and its prophet, Muhammad.
And Obama, far from being a champion of press freedom, violated it regularly, even conducting surveillance on the Associated Press.
Barack Obama has never been an advocate for the First Amendment rights to free speech and a free press, nor has he defended the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. He is simply a partisan who cites those provisions when it suits him.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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