On President Donald Trump’s first day in office, he signed an executive order that essentially reaffirmed free speech, which is already enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
The order alleged that the previous administration of President Joe Biden “trampled on free speech” by censoring “Americans’ speech on online platforms”, and forced social media companies to comply under the guise of combatting “misinformation”, “disinformation”, and “malinformation”.
What the order overlooked was that members of both parties routinely asked social media companies – including X (formerly Twitter), now owned by Trump ally Elon Musk – to remove unfavourable content.
At the same time, Trump regularly targets platforms and people critical of him, his allies and his agenda. His attacks on more traditional institutions of the press – like TV/radio news networks and newspapers – have escalated since winning the election.
“We are seeing a multipronged attack on free speech, but not just any free speech. I think, in particular, we’re seeing a multipronged attack on the ability of journalists as well as individuals to call into question anything that Donald Trump or that the Trump administration does,” Heidi Kitrosser, a constitutional law professor who focuses on freedom of speech issues at Northwestern University, told media.
“We’re seeing an effort to cow journalists into submission, not only to avoid criticism of Donald Trump and the people who work under him, but to avoid reporting the news in any way that he dislikes.”
After Trump won the presidency, he went after several media outlets. He filed two cases against The Des Moines Register and its pollster, J Ann Selzer, after it ran a poll suggesting Trump was trailing Vice President Harris.
Pollsters predicted a tight race from the get-go, and the paper was no exception. They were right. Trump won but not by the landslide he and his allies have claimed. The race was actually one of the tightest in American electoral history and the smallest since 1968. Trump ultimately finished with less than half of the popular vote.
Trump sued ABC News in March 2024 after its longtime anchor George Stephanopoulos made comments on air that Trump had been “found liable for raping” writer E Jean Carroll. In 2023, a court found that Trump sexually abused Carroll, but that is a different transgression from rape under New York law. ABC agreed to pay $15m towards Trump’s presidential foundation to settle the lawsuit.
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