"The framers literally wrote the First Amendment to prevent exactly Musk's kind of government intimidation of the press."

4 months ago 10

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"[I]f you spend years calling yourself a 'free speech absolutist' while decrying 'government censorship,' maybe one of your first moves after taking over the government shouldn’t be demanding prison sentences for journalists who report things you don’t like. ...

"[T]wo tweets, posted just hours apart, ... perfectly encapsulate his free speech hypocrisy — while simultaneously highlighting his near total lack of self-awareness.

"First, responding to some nonsense that isn’t even worth explaining, Musk pointed out that one of the first things Hitler did upon gaining power was to 'apply aggressive censorship.'

"Then, less than six hours later, after CBS’ 60 Minutes posted an interview with a former (Republican) administrator of USAID calling out Elon’s 'utter nonsense' claims about fraud at USAID, Elon declared that people at 60 Minutes 'deserve a long prison sentence' for reporting on things in a manner of which he disapproves. ... 

"[L]et’s be explicit here: this is Elon Musk, a federal government employee with unprecedented power and tremendous influence over the entire federal government at this moment, saying that journalists should be thrown in prison for a long time, because he doesn’t like their reporting. This isn’t just Musk being thin-skinned — it’s a billionaire currently running much of our government, [threatening] state power against the press, just because they called out how his claims about USAID were nonsense.

"It is difficult to think of a more obvious First Amendment violation than that. The framers literally wrote the First Amendment to prevent exactly this kind of government intimidation of the press."
~ Mike Masnick from his article 'Musk Decries Hitler’s Censorship, Right Before Threatening To Jail Critics'

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3. "The framers literally wrote the First Amendment to prevent exactly Musk's kind of government intimidation of the press."