TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Donald Trump’s unmatched facility at bleeding sense and meaning from words and concepts until only a heap of husk and stalk remains reared up again this week. Having previously established himself the foe of the First Amendment—calling defenders of free speech on the internet ‘foolish people,’ coercing White House staffers into signing nondisclosure agreements, attacking the mainstream press as the enemy of the people and urging the jailing of flag-burners—Trump has seemingly switched sides. Now he’s presenting himself as a free-speech proponent, introducing a new White House web survey whose purported fact-finding goal is to ‘advance FREEDOM OF SPEECH’ and deter bias on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook by getting you to file a complaint about how they’ve treated you. Of course, all this talk about free speech is a Trumpian dodge, designed to advance his political ends: He doesn’t believe in free speech on social media any more than he believes in open borders or free trade, as he’s demonstrated.”
–Jack Shafer, “How Trump Twists ‘Free Speech’,” Politico, May 16, 2019