President Trump, who has remained quiet about his 2024 campaign agenda since announcing his third run for president last month, released his first policy plan on Thursday outlining his aims to promote free speech online and prevent the government from colluding with big tech platforms as they've done in recent years.
The 45th president — who is now seeking to be the 47th president in the 2024 election — pledged that, should he win the GOP primary and general election, he would take a number of steps "within hours" of being inaugurated in 2025.
Among them, Trump said he would sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with other entities such as big tech companies to censor Americans' speech. He said he would also take action to ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as mis- or dis-information, a shot across the bow of the Biden administration's effort to create a "Disinformation Governance Board."
In addition, Trump explained he would begin the process of identifying and firing "every federal bureaucrat" who has engaged in domestic censorship, including at the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Health and Human Services, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, and other bureaucratic agencies.
Trump also urged the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives to "immediately send preservation letters" to the Biden administration, Biden campaign, and Silicon Valley tech companies who own social media platforms to prevent such entities from destroying documents that may incriminate them for doing the things Trump hopes to go after.
Infograph of President Trump’s free speech policy! Not bad! pic.twitter.com/LuPBkX17F5
— Andrew Pollack (@AndrewPollackFL) December 15, 2022
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It's impossible to view Trump's policy proposal as not driven by the recent revelations that have come from the "Twitter Files" released by independent journalists after Elon Musk took over the social media company — and revealed how at least one big tech entity worked with Democrats and relied on internal employee bias to change who and what its users were allowed to consume.
In addition to Trump's executive action plan, he also said that he would want to work with Congress to revise Section 230 to "get big online platforms out of the censorship business" and require them to "increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism while dramatically curtailing their power to arbitrarily restrict lawful speech."
"If we don't have free speech, then we just don't have a free country," former President Donald Trump said in a video posted on his Truth Social account. pic.twitter.com/pQlmspSoS1
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) December 15, 2022
Trump added that he would work to ensure the federal government ceases funding to nonprofits and academic programs that support authoritarian censorship and cut federal research dollars and federal loan support for five years at universities that participate or assist in censoring Americans.
What's more, Trump called for "clear criminal penalties" for federal bureaucrats who worked with private companies to censor Americans by "doing an end-run around the Constitution" and said there should be a 7-year "cooling off" period before those who work at the FBI, CIA, NSA, DNI, DHS, et al. can take jobs at companies possessing vast quantities of Americans' user data.
That portion of his policy plan is almost certainly in response to the recent revelation that James Baker went from being general counsel at the FBI to be deputy general counsel at Twitter where he helped suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story. Baker was fired by Twitter after those releasing the Twitter Files discovered Baker had a hand in preparing the files for release.
Finally, Trump called for Congress to pass a "digital bill of rights" that would give American social media users a right to due process under which government officials would need to secure a court order to take down content rather than just email requests, among other new rights pertaining to Americans' online activity.
The fight for free speech online, Trump said, is a "matter of victory or death for America." Under his plan to restore free speech, Trump said his plan would mean "we'll begin to reclaim our democracy."
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