President Trump has been unusually quiet ever since his announcement that he is running for a second term as president in 2024. But this week he came out to release his first policy plan that outlines his aim to promote free speech online. He also declared that he will prevent the government from colluding with big tech platforms like they have been found to have done in recent elections.
Trump, the 45th president of the United States, will now seek to become the 47th president in the 2024 election. This will be the third time he has run for the Oval Office.
He pledged that if he won the GOP primary and general election, he would make moves “within hours” of being inaugurated in 2025.
Former President Trump said that he would sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with big tech or any other entities in an effort to censor American speech. Trump said that he would ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as either mis- or disinformation. This was a definite shot at the Biden Administration’s effort to create a “Disinformation Governance Board.”
And Trump said that he would start the process of identifying and firing “every federal bureaucrat” who has engaged in domestic censorship. He would even do this at the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Health and Human Services, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, and other bureaucratic agencies.
Trump had a word for the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives. He wants them to “immediately send preservation letters” to the Biden administration, Biden campaign, and Silicon Valley tech companies who own social media platforms. This would prevent them from destroying documents that may incriminate them.
Trump’s new platform is certainly tied to the recent news coming from Elon Musk’s release of the “Twitter Files.” They have clearly revealed how at least one big tech company worked with the Democrats to censor what the public was allowed to view on their social media platform.
Trump is planning to go even further than promising free speech. He said that he wants to work with Congress to revise Section 230. This will get big online platforms out of the censorship business and make sure that they increase their efforts to take out illegal content that increases child exploitation and promotes terrorism.
Trump simplified his priorities through his Truth Social account, “If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country.”
Another plan of attack from Trump would be to ensure that the federal government stops giving money to nonprofits and academic programs that support censorship. He would halt federal research dollars and federal loan support that is being given to universities that participate in censoring the American public.
And the former president is demanding “clear criminal penalties” for federal bureaucrats who worked with private companies to censor Americans by “doing an end-run around the Constitution.” Trump even said that there should be a 7-year “cooling off” period before those who work at government agencies like the FBI, CIA, or the DHS can take new jobs at companies that possess large amounts of American citizens’ data.
That part of Trump’s policy is certainly referencing James Baker going from being general counsel at the FBI to being deputy general counsel at Twitter. He was instrumental in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Trump believes that this is a “matter of victory or death for America.” He thinks this is a way to “reclaim our democracy.”
