Trump Claims Excessive Criticism of Him on TV Is ‘Illegal’ and ‘No Longer Free Speech’
President Donald Trump claimed that beyond a certain point, criticism of him on television networks is “illegal” and “no longer free speech.”
On Friday, Trump took questions from reporters in the Oval Office, where Jeff Mason of Reuters asked about the ongoing fallout after Charlie Kirk’s assassination last week, which culminated in ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! after Jimmy Kimmel appeared to suggest, erroneously, that Kirk’s assassin is a conservative.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them,” Kimmel said on Monday’s show.
ABC pulled Kimmel’s show “indefinitely” on Wednesday, just hours after Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr threatened the network.
“Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
“Do you see a difference between cancel culture and consequence culture?” Mason asked.
“I’m a very strong person for free speech,” the president replied. “But 97, 94, 95, 96% of the people are against me in the sense of the newscasts are against me. The stories are– they said 97% bad. So, they gave me 97, they’ll take a great story, and they’ll make it bad. See, I think that’s really illegal, personally.”
It is unclear where Trump got the 97% figure from. Even if true, such criticism is protected speech under the First Amendment.
He later added, “So, I think it’s very sad, but I think reporting has to be at least accurate, at least accurate to an extent. Again, when somebody is given, 97% of stories are bad about a person. That’s no longer free speech. That’s no longer anything. That’s just cheating. And they cheat, and they become really members of the Democrat national committee. That’s what they are, the networks, in my opinion. They’re just offshoots of the Democrat national committee.”
Watch above via Fox News.
