Democrats and the Free Press

The main stream media and the democrats claim, like Joe Biden did recently, that president Trump is an “existential” threat to this nation. They claim that Trump is an enemy to a free press in this country and wants to censor them and shut them down.

However, not once as I recall, has the president Trump ever seriously called for the shuttering of any leftist news outlets, or silencing any opposing voices. Frankly, why would he? They are doing such a bang up job of it themselves.

Just look at the tanking ratings for CNN and the like. Every time I tune in to that network, I wonder why advertisers still run commercials there. Who’s going to see them? Every month there are new reports of CNN losing more market share.

Yet still they won’t change their narrative.

Unfortunately for the left, the facts, and history, is and has always been on our side. And it’s a funny thing about facts. There is no denying them. Oh sure, they can try to spin them, but the facts are and always will be what they are.

And the facts are that Republican presidents do not try to limit the free speech of the press or the people. Democrats do. These are the facts. And the ironic thing is that our “most popular” democrat presidents have been the one’s who are most guilty of limiting and/or shutting down practically the entire First Amendment.

In virtually every poll for the last many decades, one of the most admired and popular presidents is Franklin D. Roosevelt. Many times he comes in second or third - behind Abe Lincoln and/or George Washington. In fact, all the most heinous leftist progressive presidents are in at least the top half of the lists of the most popular presidents – including Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson.

“Under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, Wilson's administration shut down newspapers and magazines at an astounding pace. Indeed, any criticism of the government, even in your own home, could earn you a prison sentence. One man was brought to trial for explaining in his own home why he didn't want to buy Liberty Bonds,” writes Jonah Goldberg.

In a recent podcast, Mark Levin quoted a section of his latest bestseller, Unfreedom of the Press.

He devoted a portion of it to the truth about Franklin Roosevelt. Levin says that under FDR, the newly formed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1934, reduced radio station license renewals from three years to only six months, in order to give Roosevelt, “maximum authority over the life and death of radio stations.” In other words, they had better toe the “party” line or risk losing their license. Because of this threat, “NBC announced that it was limiting broadcasts contrary to the policies of the United States Government.”

CBS echoed the same sentiment. Broadcasters were scared to death of the Roosevelt administration. Can anyone honestly say the same of Trump? They may all hate him, but they don’t fear him.

And then there was Senator Hugo Black. After a stint as the attorney for and a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and prior to Roosevelt appointing him to the U.S. supreme Court, Senator Black, a New Deal cheerleader, headed up the Special Senate Committee on Lobbying, also known as the “Black Inquisition Committee.”

Under Black, the committee, “expanded its mission into a more general probe of anti-New Deal organizations and individuals. The committee used highly intrusive methods, notably catch-all dragnet subpoenas, to secure evidence. It worked closely with the IRS for access to tax returns and with the FCC to obtain copies of millions of telegrams.”

Does any of this sound eerily familiar? Hello – the Obama administration targeting the press and the Tea Party, and Jerry Nadler with his endless subpoenas and his demand for more and more documents, desperately searching for a crime?

For the past 100 years, it has been the Democrats, not the Republicans, who have been the enemies of free speech and a free press.