That’s the chest of CNN’s Jake Tapper above. He was making a little frowny-face yesterday for the idiots viewing CNN who are too dim to realize that the accusatory headline is a non-sequitur, like “I like ice cream, can you swim?” The White House suspending the AP’s White House privileges—that’s privileges, which are distinct from rights, Jake—has nothing to do with freedom of speech or even the First Amendment, so the implied hypocrisy is more fake news.

Added: On “Twitter/X” J.D. Vance responded to another journalist making the same “point”:

The remarkably negative (and ignorant, and biased) Axis media reaction to J.D. Vance’s speech in Germany proves one again that as often as President Trump exaggerates, calling the news media the “enemy of the people” was neither excessive, unfair nor untrue. That’s exactly what it is. It is now the enemy of democracy as well, and nothing illustrates that better than the rush to condemn the Vice-President for telling European leaders to stop censoring speech based on political content.

It takes special chutzpah for any media organization to accuse Trump of stifling press coverage when he has made himself more accessible to the news media in less than a month than Joe Biden was in four years. I would also venture that the Associated Press could get more useful information surfing the web that it ever got from Biden’s idiotic, stumbling, incompetent, lazy paid liar Karine Jean-Pierre. The AP has proved itself conflicted, partisan and anti-Trump as well as unreliable. Why should it be entitled to attend press briefings instead of, say, Ethics Alarms?

Also on CNN, Nick Paton Walsh attacked Vance’s speech while defending censorship to prevent “authoritarian regimes.” This was the excuse used to justify banishing Trump from social media. I suppose it was also the excuse for blocking coverage of and commentary on Hunter Biden’s laptop on news platforms, Facebook and Twitter. Those who would punish and censor speech always have “reasons,” but the real reason is maintaining their own power and crippling the functioning of democracy. Just listen to this hack…

“Vance’s complaints struck at the heart of a key difference in the role of free speech in Europe and the United States, a much fresher democracy. In Europe, free speech is paramount and enshrined in law, but so is responsibility for the safety of citizens. Some European legal systems suggest this means you cannot falsely shout there is a “fire” in a crowded theater and escape punishment if the resulting stampede causes injury simply because you had the right to shout “fire.” In the United States, the First Amendment means you can shout whatever you want. In the smartphone and post-9/11 era, Europe has prohibited some extremist activity online. It is still illegal to advocate for the Nazis in Germany, and it should not be controversial or mysterious why. The wildly rebellious press across Europe are a vibrant sign of its free speech. And the fringe parties Vance objected to being absent in Munich are growing in their popularity. Nobody is really being shut down.”

Hilarious! Enshrined in law “but”! If speakers, writers and artists can be censored and punished for words and opinions that some authority rules “unsafe,” then there is no free speech. It’s amazing that advocates for censorship still use Oliver Wendell Holmes’ thoroughly discredited “shouting fire in a crowded theater” analogy. Ken White of Popehat, perhaps the sharpest and most eloquent blogger in captivity until he was infected with the Trump Derangement virus, decisively explained in “Three generations of a hackneyed apologia for censorship are enough” how Holmes’s famous opinion has been misused to defend government censorship of speech that mentions or threatens violence without actually inciting it on the spot. This includes “hate speech,” which is what many of the European countries outlaw and what the totalitarian Left here would love to outlaw in the U.S. “Hate speech” would mean “speech that progressives hate.” (Knucklehead Tim Walz said on national TV that “hate speech” isn’t protected by the First Amendment.) Walsh, like Walz, literally doesn’t know what he’s talking about; he is quoting an opinion he hasn’t read, and he definitely hasn’t bothered to read White’s explanation of why that defense of censorship is based on legal and constitutional ignorance.

CNN’s censorship rationalizing pales before CBS’s efforts, however. Incredibly, “Face the Nation’s” Margaret Brennan really and truly asserted to Marco Rubio that Hitler’s Germany used “freedom of speech” to spark the Holocaust. Kudos to the Secretary of State for not channeling Dan Ackroyd from the old Saturday Night Live “Point/Counterpoint” skit and responding, “Margaret you ignorant slut!” She deserved it.

Rubio was defending Vance’s speech, and this exchange ensued,

MARCO RUBIO: I assure you, the United States has come under withering criticism on many occasions from many leaders in Europe, and we don’t go around throwing temper tantrums about it.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide. And he met with the head of a political party that has far right views and some historic ties to extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right.

RUBIO: Well, I have to disagree with you. No, I have – I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they – they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of history. I also think it’s wrong – again, I go back to the point of his speech. The point of his speech was basically that there is an erosion in free speech and intolerance for opposing points of view within Europe, and that’s of concern, because that is eroding. That’s not an erosion of your military capabilities. That’s not an erosion of your economic standing. That’s an erosion of the actual values that bind us together in this transatlantic union that everybody talks about. And I think allies and friends and partners that have worked together now for 80 years should be able to speak frankly to one another in open forums without being offended, insulted, or upset. And I spoke to Foreign Ministers from multiple countries throughout Europe. Many of them probably didn’t like the speech or didn’t agree with it, but they were continuing to engage with us on all sorts of issues that unite us. So, again, at the end of the day, I think that, you know, people give all – – that is a forum in which you’re supposed to be inviting people to give speeches, not basically a chorus where everyone is saying the exact same thing. That’s not always going to be the case when it’s a collection of democracies where leaders have the right and the privilege to speak their minds in forums such as these.

There was no “free speech” in Nazi Germany! Who doesn’t know that? I mean, other than CBS news hosts? After Rubio’s slam dunk, Brennan had no response and moved on to another topic.

Fire her.

But CBS wasn’t finished. On “60 Minutes,” which should be hosted now with bags over the various correspondents’ heads after the Kamala Harris interview fiasco, the show appeared to cheer on German authorities arresting “online trolls.” There was not a hint of criticism in her coverage, but rather envy. Later she interviewed German prosecutors as if they were the enlightened ones. Here was her introduction to the segment:

SHARYN ALFONSI: “If you’ve ever dared to read the comments on a social media post, you might start to wonder if civilized discourse is just a myth. Aggressive threats, lies, and harassment have unfortunately become the norm online, where anonymity has emboldened some users to push the limits of civility. In the United States, most of what anyone says, sends, or streams online — even if it’s hate-filled or toxic — is protected by the First Amendment as free speech. But Germany is trying to bring some civility to the world wide web by policing it in a way most Americans could never imagine. In an effort, it says, to protect discourse, German authorities have started prosecuting online trolls. And as we saw, it often begins with a pre-dawn wake-up call from the police. It’s 6:01 on a Tuesday morning, and we were with state police as they raided this apartment in northwest Germany. Inside, six armed officers searched a suspect’s home, then seized his laptop and cellphone. Prosecutors say those electronics may have been used to commit a crime. The crime? Posting a racist cartoon online. At the exact same time, across Germany, more than 50 similar raids played out. Part of what prosecutors say is a coordinated effort to curb online hate speech in Germany.”

Later, she said…

“As prosecutors explain it, the German constitution protects free speech, but not hate speech. And here’s where it gets tricky: German law prohibits speech that could incite hatred or is deemed insulting. Perpetrators are sometimes surprised to learn that what they post online is illegal, according to Dr. Matthäus Fink, one of the state prosecutors tasked with policing Germany’s robust hate speech laws. ‘They don’t think it was illegal. And they say, ‘No, that’s my free speech,’ Fink said. ‘And we say, ‘No, you have free speech as well, but it is also has its limits.’ In the U.S., most of what gets posted online, even if it’s hate-filled, is protected by the First Amendment as free speech. But in Germany, authorities are prosecuting online trolls in an effort to protect discourse and democracy. It can be a crime to publicly insult someone in Germany, and the punishment can be even worse if the insult is shared online because that content sticks around forever,Fink said. Fink, and prosecutors Svenja Meininghaus and Frank-Michael Laue, explained that German law prohibits the spread of malicious gossip, violent threats and fake quotes. Reposting lies online can also be a crime.”

Wow, isn’t that great?

Naturally, the New York Times is also on board with criticizing Vance for advocating “too much” free speech. Berlin bureau chief Jim Tankersley authored “Vance, Like Musk, Attacks German Norms on Nazis and Extremism.” The German “norm” the Times is defending is censorship:

“The American vice president visited a concentration camp on Thursday afternoon. He laid a wreath at the foot of a statue, made the sign of the cross and paused before a memorial wall where in multiple tongues, including German and English, the words “Never Again” were written. JD Vance told reporters he had read about the Holocaust in books, but that its “unspeakable evil” was driven home by his trip to Dachau, where more than 30,000 people died at the hands of the Nazis. “It’s something that I’ll never forget, and I’m grateful to have been able to see it up close in person,” Mr. Vance said. But after Mr. Vance spoke in Munich the next day, Germany’s leaders effectively questioned if he had understood what he had just seen. Eighty years after American soldiers liberated Dachau, top German officials this weekend all-but accused Mr. Vance — and by extension, President Trump — of boosting a political party that many Germans consider to be dangerously descended from Nazism. That party, called the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is sitting second in the polls for next Sunday’s parliamentary elections, with about 20 percent of the public saying they support it….”

Vance is accused of supporting a party by asserting that it shouldn’t be outlawed or censored. Of course, if a government can outlaw one party that it decides is dangerous, it can outlaw any party, which is what the previous President and his party was moving rapidly toward with this…

We have powerful forces in the Axis media that will support content-based censorship if it sees any chance of the Democrats inflicting it on society. Their reaction to J.D. Vance giving a ringing endorsement of free speech to European leaders proves that.

Enemies of the people, enemies of the Republic.