JD Vance Says ‘Jailing People for Dissenting Views’ Is ‘A Threat to Free Speech’ — Amid Elon Musk’s Call for ’60 Minutes’ Staff to Be Jailed
AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
Vice President JD Vance is never beating the allegations that he’s getting sidelined in what critics have been deriding as the “Trump-Musk administration” — posting a tweet Monday that said threatening to jail people for dissenting views was a “threat to free speech” the morning after Elon Musk literally tweeted that sort of threat.
Free speech advocates have loudly criticized President Donald Trump for actions taken during the first few weeks of his second term, including banning the Associated Press from the White House Press Briefing room and other official White House events for refusing to follow his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The AP did comply with Trump’s renaming of North America’s highest peak from Denali back to Mount McKinley, citing the scope of U.S. presidential authority and its status as an international news organization as the rationale behind how it would identify both places.
Meanwhile, Musk has raised alarms as the DOGE team he commands has taken a wrecking ball to numerous federal agencies, firing scores of employees despite uncertain legal authority and ongoing questions about his conflicts of interest considering his billions of dollars of federal contracts and regulatory issues.
The SpaceX, Tesla, and X CEO has frequently styled himself as a free speech warrior, but is wont to not only weaponize his hundreds of millions of online followers to harass and threaten those he publicly criticizes, but also call for government action, even criminal penalties, to be imposed on his foes.
Musk fired another tweeted shot Sunday evening, attacking 60 Minutes, calling them “the biggest liars in the world,” accusing them of having “engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election,” and declaring that “[t]hey deserve a long prison sentence.” Along with that tweet, Musk shared a video clip of 60 Minutes’ interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris that was posted by a popular pro-MAGA account, claiming that it showed the interviewer allowing Harris to “lie while the cameras were rolling.” Proposed Community Notes on the video clip clarify that it actually shows a producer “audibly” trying to “get an over-the-shoulder shot,” not get a different answer, and adds that “This isn’t illegal, and jailing journalists over this would be a severe violation of First Amendment-protected press freedom.”
Vance spoke out on a different free speech issue Monday, firing back at a tweet by Mehdi Hasan that criticized the vice president’s recent speech in Munich in which he declared that the biggest threat to Europe was not Russia or China but their own restrictions on free speech and lack of acceptance of far-right parties.
“Yes dummy,” wrote Vance. “I think there’s a difference between not giving a reporter a seat in the WH press briefing room and jailing people for dissenting views. The latter is a threat to free speech, the former is not. Hope that helps!”
