Donald Trump is seeking to execute the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the same way that his thugs gunned down Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good.
The arrest of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for doing their jobs as journalists and covering a public protest at a church in Minneapolis is a violent assault on freedom of the press in the United States of America, one of the most egregious we have ever seen from a U.S. government.
Not one but two judges rejected prior efforts by the—misnamed—U.S. Department of Justice to indict Lemon and Fort for their presence at the church protest. But undaunted, Attorney General Pam Bondi proceeded to personally direct the arrest of Lemon in Los Angeles late on Thursday night, thus reminding us that she more than any other member of the Trump cabinet deserves to be impeached—no small distinction in a group that includes deserving candidates for being fired and convicted by the Senate like Kristi Noem, RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth.
Lemon’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, wrote in a statement, “Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable” and he characterized the arrest as an “unprecedented attack” on a free press.
If anything, Lowell understates the dangers associated with Lemon’s arrest. Seeking to prosecute him represents not one but three separate attacks on freedoms so fundamental that were among the first guaranteed by our Constitution.
First, by arresting Lemon, Trump is seeking to silence a journalist and send a message to other journalists that objective reporting about facts that make the administration uncomfortable will not be tolerated. Next, going after Lemon is part of a bigger on-going effort to use the Justice Department to seek retribution against a wide array of perceived critics of the administration.
If Donald Trump or those close to him do not like you or do not like what you say, you are now at risk of arrest or worse.
Finally, Lemon is not the only person who was present at this protest who is being targeted. Therefore, the arrest needs to be seen not only as a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of “freedom of speech or of the press,” it is also yet another assault on “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”
As far as the White House was concerned, it was a matter to be celebrated and they did so with a tasteless mockery of Lemon.
Indeed, it should be seen in this regard as being part of a brutal pattern of suppression of free expression in Minneapolis that has ranged from threatening demonstrators(“You raise your voice, I will erase your voice”), to spraying them with tear gas, to actually gunning them down as in the case of Pretti and Good.
It is all part of an egregious, profoundly un-American, illegal and gravely dangerous long-term campaign against free expression in the United States that has Trump’s views and actions—once again—more aligned with dictators from Putin to Hitler than he is with the principles on which this country was founded or with the Constitution he swore to “preserve, protect and defend.”
White House efforts to limit access to the president to journalists who will cover him favorably, and to ban journalists who have been critical; presidential and White House staff insults against journalists they do not like; and Pentagon and other agency efforts to also limit press access are part of this.
The effort to denigrate, demote, and even court-martial, an American hero, Senator Mark Kelly, as well as recent threats by “border czar” Tom Homan to prosecute Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez for hosting a “know your rights” web event are also elements of their ongoing efforts.
In just the past couple of weeks we have seen other evidence of the onslaught that certainly makes Trump the greatest enemy of the First Amendment ever to occupy the Oval Office.
The takeover he orchestrated of TikTok, putting the influential platform into the hands of his supporters like Larry Ellison is part of this. Other evidence of that systematic seizure of media companies by the right has also been visible, from the post-Ellison buyout machinations of Trump puppet Bari Weiss at CBS News, to the systematic gutting of the Washington Post by Trump suck-up Jeff Bezos. Bezos’ efforts to use his media clout to butter up and actually direct cash to a president who he sees as an important advocate for the companies he owns, was also on particularly embarrassing display with his indefensible, unwatchable and ridiculous $75 million “Melania” bribeumentary.
It is important that all these actions—including the Lemon arrest—be seen in this context. They are part of an effort to strip away fundamental freedoms from Americans. They are critical steps to turning this country into an autocracy. And they are directly linked to efforts to undermine voting rights that were also on display this week with the unjustifiable, conspiracy-theory driven execution of a too general, fishing-expedition warrant to seize election records in Fulton County, Georgia.
The efforts are so sweeping and pernicious that there is only one way to reverse their impact and that is for Americans to more actively, purposefully, and effectively assert and use the rights that are their birthright than they have ever done in the past. Indeed, Trump is hoping that people will not push back, will not fight back, can be intimidated into silence and compliance.
The people of Minneapolis have stood up to say they disagree and again, in this instance, we can only hope that they will serve as an example and an inspiration to the rest of the country.
Thomas Jefferson once wrote that if he had to choose between a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, he would “not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Jefferson also wrote that, “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
It’s a good thing Jefferson did not see the abuses of Trump, Bondi and their administration—both because he would have been outraged and because had he expressed himself today as he did when he was alive, he would probably end up being arrested.
