General Discussion

muriel_volestrangler

(101,364 posts) Fri Dec 16, 2022, 09:01 PM Dec 2022

A quacks' and fraudsters' charter: Trump would ban government from labeling speech as misinformation

Former President Trump said Thursday that he’d ban the U.S. government from labeling any domestic speech as “misinformation” or “disinformation” if he returns to the White House.

“I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business or person to censor, limit, categorize or impede the lawful speech of American citizens. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as mis- or disinformation,” Trump said in a pre-taped video shared with the New York Post.

The former president also said he’d fire federal bureaucrats who he perceived to have engaged in domestic censorship.

“Directly or indirectly, whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are,” he said of those he’d seek to fire.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3776629-trump-says-hed-ban-government-from-labeling-speech-as-misinformation/

This would allow, for example, people to claim that injecting bleach into your children was safe and would cure Covid. Note that this is not just an unforseen side-effect because he really wants, say, to prevent the FBI pointing out his lies about colluding with Russia; he's already stated it's about health.

So this would prevent government agencies from warning people about scams. I guess he'd let them arrest them, but that would mean the harm gets done first, and then the criminals without good lawyers get punished for it. Rather than being able to stop much more of the harm.

He really does want an America in which no-one in authority can say that he lies.