As predicted, Trump is using death of Charlie Kirk to destroy free speech
When I warned my readers that Donald Trump would use the death of Charlie Kirk to advance his longstanding war on free speech, I was accused of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), or worse. However, recent actions by Marco Rubio and proposed legislation in the House have confirmed my fears in ways once thought unthinkable in America.
We begin in the days immediately following Kirk’s death when, in an appearance on the Katie Miller Podcast, Attorney General Pam Bondi declared that the DOJ would begin prosecuting people who use so-called hate speech or who said anything negative about Kirk:
“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society…We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” (Emphasis mine)
Katie Miller is the wife of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, the man who promised to use the full force of government to “take away [the] freedom” of those on the left for their “hateful” rhetoric in response to Charlie Kirk’s murder:
The power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power and if you have broken the law, take away your freedom. (Emphasis mine)
In a later interview on Hannity, Bondi took things a step further when she promised to prosecute employers if they had employees who refused to embrace the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.
That brings us to today, where Trump has enlisted the help of Marco Rubio and the State Department. Earlier this week, Rubio announced that he had revoked visas for a half-dozen noncitizens who had “celebrated” Kirk’s assassination in recent weeks online (via The Intercept):
The State Department shared the offending remarks in a thread on X, redacting the posters’ handles and avatars. Many of the comments were crass and incendiary — the kind of protected political speech at the heart of the First Amendment, which applies to citizens and noncitizens alike.
Nota Baloyi, a South African who spoke to The Intercept on Wednesday, had his visa revoked for tweeting that Kirk “won’t be remembered as a hero. He was used to astroturf a movement of white nationalist trailer trash!”
Baloyi told The Intercept that he deleted his post from X after South African right-wingers flagged it for the State Department by tagging Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who tweeted in the days after Kirk’s death that visa revocations were “under way” and that noncitizens who were “cheering on the public assassination of a political figure” should “prepare to be deported.” Baloyi disputed that his post was mocking or making light of Kirk’s death.
“This is a profound threat to free expression,” wrote Brian Hauss, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, in a statement to The Intercept. “The government is weaponizing immigration law to punish people for expressing disapproved opinions.” (Emphasis mine)
Unfortunately, government denial of visas for foreigners won’t be the end of things if Trumpist Republicans have their way. A bill was introduced prior to the government shutdown that will give Marco Rubio and the State Department “thought police” power to deny passports to US citizens (via The Intercept):
In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stripped Turkish doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk of her visa based on what a court later found was nothing more than her opinion piece critical of Israel.
Now, a bill introduced by the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is ringing alarm bells for civil liberties advocates who say it would grant Rubio the power to revoke the passports of American citizens on similar grounds.
The provision, sponsored by Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., as part of a larger State Department reorganization. Mast’s legislation says that it takes aim at “terrorists and traffickers,” but critics say it could be used to deny American citizens the right to travel based solely on their speech.
Seth Stern, the director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, said the bill would open the door to “thought policing at the hands of one individual.”
“Marco Rubio has claimed the power to designate people terrorist supporters based solely on what they think and say,” Stern said, “even if what they say doesn’t include a word about a terrorist organization or terrorism.” (Emphasis mine)
To say that these actions are taking place independent of Donald Trump is naive at best. When asked about Bondi’s “hate speech” threat following the death of Charlie Kirk, Trump defended Bondi’s comments while issuing a threat of his own to go after the folks he likes to refer to as the “Fake News” media for their hate speech (H/T Joseph Goebbels):
Reporter: What do you make of Bondi saying she is going after hate speech? A lot of allies say hate speech is free speech.
Trump: Probably go after people like you, you treat me unfairly, you have hate in your heart. ABC paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech, your company paid me 16 million for a form of hate speech, maybe they’ll go after you. (Emphasis mine)
When it comes to protecting the Constitution, conservatives used to be able to count on a small (and getting smaller) group of men and women in Congress to take a stand for liberty, but not anymore. Case in point: Sen. Rand Paul, who came out in support of Trump and Bondi on the hate speech issue:
People say, ‘Oh, people have a right to say things.’ Well, actually they don’t necessarily have a right to say things. Many people have in their contract what we call a morals clause … I think it is time for this to be a crackdown on people.
Of course, what would Trump’s war against liberty and the Constitution be without the undying fealty of the talking heads that make up the faux-conservative media? On the subject of prosecuting hate speech, Steve Deace (he refers to it as “political sadism” that must be purged from civilized society) expressed his belief that “we” need to punish them before “they” punish us.
I don’t want to hear, ‘Well, they (leftist) might do it to us when they have power.’ They’ve already done it all. They’re going to do it all over again. 2005 called and it wants its talking points back. That’s not where we (conservatives) are right now. We HAVE to punish evil. (Emphasis mine)
Judge Andrew Napolitano once pointed out how the First Amendment makes no exceptions for so-called hate speech:
The speech we love needs no protection. The speech we hate does. The government has no authority to evaluate speech. As the framers understood, all people have a natural right to think as we wish and to say and publish whatever we think. Even hateful, hurtful and harmful speech is protected speech.
Punishing speech is the most dangerous business because there will be no end. The remedy for hateful or threatening speech is not silence or punishments; it is more speech — speech that challenges the speaker. (Emphasis mine)
I wrote an article documenting how Donald Trump and MAGA wanted to turn Charlie Kirk into a martyr in order to launch an authoritarian takeover of America, so these recent actions should come as no surprise.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties. He the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty.
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