Trump's War on Dissent

The Right's cancel culture on steroids

Honestly, I don’t know if I should even mention this, because Trump’s churlish indecency is hardly breaking news.

But the struggle against numbness continues, so it should be noted that on March 13, 2026, in the midst of a metastatic war and global economic crisis, the President of the United States took time out to post this bit of excreta, which mixes abuse with threats against a reporter who dared to write something critical about the thin-skinned Orange God King:

You roll your eyes, but attention really ought to be paid, because of (1) what it says (again) about the mind of the man, and (2) the Administration’s larger assault on dissent and the press.

None of this should come as a surprise.

Trump has promiscuously accused critics of TREASON, and his Department of Justice has defined a vast range of opinions — including “anti-Americanism, anti-Capitalism, and anti- Christianity — as “domestic terrorism.”¹

But free speech is never more at risk than during times of war, when dissent can be equated with disloyalty and critics are accused of “hating America.” (See Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush.)

And there is nothing at all subtle about Trump’s threats against the press.

Happy Sunday.

Trust me, I get it. I know that all of this can feel overwhelming. I can tell because last week every time I posted, I actually lost subscribers. So, the sensible thing would be to take the day off, right?

But once more into the breach, my friends. Because this is how some of us stay sane. Or try to.

Please consider joining our smallish band of brothers and sisters…

Trump’s Wartime Cancel Culture

Pete Hegseth — deliciously dubbed the “Snowflake Secretary” by Jon Passantino — spent much of his press conference Friday whinging (not a typo) about press coverage of the various miscalculations, snafus, and FUBARs of the war on Iran.

Hegseth, who has shown himself to be deeply concerned with projecting an image as a grizzled warfighter who will show "no quarter" to enemies, has used his authority as Defense secretary to wage a relentless campaign against press independence—one that has escalated sharply in recent weeks…

But Hegseth’s sniffling about media criticism is only part of the Administration’s campaign against dissent. And that campaign — which, of course, flows right from the top — fits a larger (and familiar) pattern. Joyce Vance calls it “Attacking the First Amendment on Repeat.”

Even as the war festers on, Trump is boasting online about his success in getting much of the media to bend to his will.

Notes Vance: “The President of the United States touted defunding PBS and NPR. He gloated about anchors who were ‘out’: Chuck Todd at NBC, Jim Acosta at CNN, Joy Reid at MSNBC, and others. And more, most of it is indicative of a desire to have state-controlled media instead of a free press. ‘FCC Broadcast Accountability’ came under the label of “Reform.”

Which brings us to Brendan Carr, the reliably vile chair of the FCC, who issued an unsubtle threat on X (the site that formerly claimed to be all about free speech):

“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions - also known as the fake news - have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,.

“The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”

Writes Joyce Vance:

There’s the threat: Cross this administration and lose your ability to stay on the air.

Where have we heard that kind of threat before? The law firms that Trump tried to put out of business with his executive orders? To Anthropic last week? With colleges, universities, political leaders, students, and others, ever since this administration came to power.

This is an administration that cannot tolerate dissent. And dissent is essential to the American tradition. It is who we are. It is embodied in the First Amendment.

**

Where else have we heard these kinds of threats? Here’s a quick flashback to last year, when the Trumpist Right went full cancel culture after the murder of Charlie Kirk. It’s worth reposting, if only for our files (and a reminder to historians who will try to make sense of our deplorable times):

From last September:

The MAGA Right — and Trump himself — did not wait for any actual evidence before demanding an aggressive cancel culture for their political critics.

• “We have to have steely resolve. Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are.” — Steve Bannon

• “If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die.” — Elon Musk on X.

• “They are at war with us, whether we want to accept it or not… Everybody’s accountable … the politicians, the media, and all these rats out there. This can never happen again. It ends now. This is a turning point and we know which direction we’re going.” — Fox News host Jesse Walters

• “We are up against demonic forces from the pit of Hell. This is existential. A fight for our own existence and the existence of our country.” — right-wing commentator Matt Walsh

• “I don’t think they realize it yet, but murdering Charlie is going to be remembered as the day where we finally woke up to what this fight really is. It’s not a civil dispute among fellow countrymen. It’s a war between diametrically opposed worldviews which cannot peacefully coexist with one another. One side will win, and one side will lose..” — Nick Freitas, Republican Virginia state delegate.

• “It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos” — right-wing influencer Christopher Rufo

• “It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization. We must shut these lunatic leftists down. Once and for all. The Left is a national security threat.” — Trump’s bigoted BFF Laura Loomer

**

The smart kids will tell us that we can dismiss much of the overheated rhetoric as merely fulminations from the fringe.

But the fringe is now the mainstream, and we can watch in real time as the rhetoric moves from social media bleats into Trump’s inner circle, then into the Oval Office itself, and finally into official policies.

Listen to the sort of rhetoric we are already hearing from elected GOP representatives — men and woman who actually make laws.

On Thursday, Wisconsin’s deeply poltroonish Congressman Derrick van Orden lashed out at members of the media

Van Orden shakes his finger at gathered reporters and blames them directly for Kirk’s death.

“Every. Single. One. Of. You. Here. You’re at fault,” said Van Orden.

NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Melanie Zanona tried to ask him, “How can you say that when we don’t even know who the shooter is?”

“You know what?” replied Van Orden. “Knock it off. Knock it off.”

Another reporter tried to ask about Republicans and Van Orden interjected, “You are responsible for that assassination yesterday.”

Van Orden was not done. He blasted out social media posts blaming Canadians, liberal members of the European Parliament, schools and universities, whom he accused of wanting “civil war” and calling them “21st century brown shirts.” As Mediaite noted: “In multiple tweets, he called for “Zero Federal Funding” for schools and universities that employed someone who had posted comments on social media critical of Kirk or sounding heartless about his death.”

In every case he was targeting speech — words and ideas. Keep that pattern in mind. To be sure, much of the anti-Kirk rhetoric has been deeply offensive and ghoulish. And, as I have written, it deserves condemnation — in the form of other speech. Not government retaliation. This is the essence of the First Amendment, and it is a principle that Charlie Kirk himself repeatedly emphasized and embraced.

But that is not what MAGA wants now.

On X, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) vowed to “use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk.”

Higgins said that any social media accounts from people who “ran their mouths with their smartass hatred, celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man” must come down.

The Louisiana Republican also demanded that any users who posted those “belittling” posts be “banned from ALL PLATFORMS FOREVER.”

Higgins is not content with simply censoring and banning critics from social media. He proposes a sweeping jihad against people “who ran their mouth.”

“I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked. I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination,” he wrote.

On the floor of the House, another representative, Bob Onder, a Republican from Missouri lashed out at the “American left” as “evil” suggested that “the transgender cult” had murdered Kirk.

[Everything] has changed. If we didn’t know it already, there is no longer any middle ground. Some of the American left are undoubtedly well-meaning people, but their ideology is pure evil.

They hate the good, the truth, and the beautiful, and embrace the evil, the false, and ugly. And they literally will kill those with whom they disagree, just as their predecessors—leftists Marx, and Stalin, and Lenin, and Pol Pot, and Fidel Castro—did. We must know that. And we must stand firm, and we must win this twilight struggle.

…

And then there was Trump. In prepared remarks, Trump said:

For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.²

And then came the threat of government action:

My Administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it….

Note again that he is not talking about guns, or mental health, or terrorism in general. He is specifically targeting critical speech and, without any evidence of their involvement in any way, “organizations” that “support” critical rhetoric.

Lest you think this is just more Trump bluster, the crackdown is already beginning: “State Department warns immigrants not to mock Kirk’s death.”

The State Department on Thursday indicated it would review the legal status of immigrants “praising, rationalizing, or making light” of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting.

As we know, irony was beaten to death by hammers long ago. But it seems worth mentioning that Charlie Kirk was an outspoken free speech advocate — speaking at college campuses across the country where he confronted his critics in open debate.

He insisted on his freedom to say even offensive things.

But Trump — with the enthusiastic support of the Right — seems committed to turning Kirk’s murder into a pretext for a suppression of words, thoughts, and language that the regime wants to suppress.

Trump, writes, Robert Tracinski, “has been building a subtle but steady drumbeat in which anything that can be construed as ‘vilifying’ people on the right is interpreted as incitement to violence.”

So calling Trump a dictator, which many of us are doing, would count as “hateful rhetoric” that somehow makes us directly responsible for political violence—and justifies political violence by the state to shut us down.

The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway makes this point explicit. Responding specifically to a Washington Post article by Robert Kagan, an unflinching Trump critic, she flags criticism of Trump’s authoritarianism as “assassination prep rhetoric.”

This raises the prospect of a paradox in which it is terribly unfair and wrong to call Donald Trump a dictator—and if you do, his administration will investigate and punish you for your speech.

Exit take: It does not take much imagination to see how Trump will use the Iran war as a pretext for a similar assault on critics, dissent, and the principle of free speech.

Sunday dogs

The weather outside is frightful… but the boys are ready for their close-ups.

1. “Pam Bondi is Coming for Domestic Terrorists. You Might Be One of Them.”

Bondi’s memo says it targets domestic terrorism. But the focus is exhaustively — almost singularly — on ideology. The memo’s language essentially builds a composite culture war enemy. Although the directive mentions the statutory definition requiring acts dangerous to human life, it directs federal law enforcement to investigate individuals whose “animating principle is adherence” to several viewpoints.

And the “extreme viewpoints” and ideological frameworks the Attorney General instructs federal law enforcement to prioritize include? (These are direct quotes)

• Opposition to law and immigration enforcement…

• Extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders…

• Adherence to radical gender ideology…

• Anti-Americanism…

• Anti-capitalism…

• Anti-Christianity…

• Support for the overthrow of the United States Government…

• Hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality,,,