A friend DM’d this to me today, with the question: Why is this man still talking?
The short answer is that in the US, we let people say what they want, short of imminent threats of violence or incitement thereof. You can be the biggest ignorant fool in the world, and you can still speak your mind.
Too bad Barack Obama doesn’t want to reciprocate. Speaking this week at a policy forum, the former president and ultimate author of the Russia-collusion hoax wagged his finger about those who might say incorrect things while on social-media platforms. Obama’s in favor of the First Amendment on opinions, he emphasized, but wants government to control the facts.
Obama calls this an “experiment” in “new forms of journalism.” Many of us would call it déjà vu:
Barack Obama says the quiet part out loud — it’s time to “experiment” with “new forms of journalism” with “government regulatory constraints.”
“Part of what we’re going to have to do is to start experimenting with new forms of journalism and how we use social media in ways that… pic.twitter.com/Rp7TENsqmE
— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) October 29, 2025
“Part of what we’re going to have to do is to start experimenting with new forms of journalism and how we use social media in ways that reaffirm facts and separate facts from opinion. We want diversity of opinion. We don’t want diversity of facts. That, I think, is one of the big tasks of social media. By the way, it will require some government regulatory constraints…”
Ahem. The First Amendment, which Obama claims to support in this same clip, makes perfectly clear that the federal government cannot constrain speech. “Congress shall make no law,” it reads, emphases mine, “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Obama wants Congress to give the executive branch authority to “abridge” the speech of American citizens and of the “press,” in the social-media sense.
Americans have a First Amendment right to speak their mind and make their arguments in public free of government constraint or censorship. It does not matter whether that argument is wrong, or gets facts wrong. The Wall Street Journal offered an absurd and deceptive piece on Stand Your Ground and lethal self-defense, and it shouldn’t have been published at all — but that’s not a decision for the government to make. The free markets in both speech and commerce are the natural and legitimate correctives for bad speech; I responded with more (and in my opinion, better) speech, and subscribers can cancel if the product is bad enough, a step I have already taken.
Besides, what Obama proposes isn’t an “experiment” at all. The Biden administration created a government-Big Tech censorship complex that accomplished exactly what Obama proposes here. The White House, mainly through the Departments of State and HHS, pressured social media platforms to demonitize dissenting voices on a range of issues, especially pandemic management policies. Biden even attempted to create his own overt Orwellian Ministry of Truth in the proposed Disinformation Governance Board, and appointed “misinformation expert” Nina Jankowicz to run it. Biden had to throw in the towel and cut Jankowicz loose after her own social-media track record got exposed. The efforts to suppress dissent and debate through the “misinformation” hysteria in a more sotto voce manner continued until Biden left office and Donald Trump and Marco Rubio dismantled its mechanisms at the State Department.
Obama’s proposal for another DBG “experiment” reminds us of the dangers of allowing this version of the Democrat Party to return to power. They have learned nothing from the last few years; they still want to control the speech and the thoughts of Americans. They see 1984 as a roadmap. The rest of us better read it again as a prophecy.
Editor’s Note: Here at Hot Air, we’ve been dealing with real government suppression of free speech for YEARS. Despite the threats and consequences, we refuse to go silent and remain committed to delivering the truth.
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