Deport commie fact-checkers!

Secretary of Institutional Cowardice — excuse me, I mean “of State” — Marco Rubio issued a memo to our embassies this month, ordering them to deny visas to anyone “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the U.S.”The memo, confirmed by the State Department, demands enhanced vetting of visa applicants “to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others,” reliable new services reported.National Public Radio reconfirmed the language of the memo, which Courthouse News has been unable to obtain. According to NPR, in reports backed up by The Guardian: “If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible” for a visa, the memo reads. It cites a policy announced by Rubio in May this year restricting visas from being issued to “foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans.”According to NPR, which said the memo was sent to U.S. foreign stations on Tuesday, Dec. 2, diplomatic officials are instructed to turn down visa applications from anybody who worked on fact-checking, content moderation “or other activities the Trump administration considers ‘censorship’ of Americans’ speech.”This boggles the mind in seven dimensions.Fact-checking neo-Nazi propaganda sashaying around the internet as news is “‘censorship of Americans’ speech”?How “interesting,” as Arne Johnson said. “But stupid.”Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims Trump made during his first term: an average of 21 per day — a number fact-checked (the horror!) by The Hill.)So now our powerful, homebred lackeys want to goose-step over little guys like me, who checks facts as part of my job, because I try to keep bullshit off our news pages?In doing this, sayeth Herren Schlumpf und Rubio, I am “suppressing the free speech ‘essential to the American way of life’”?Not that Ubergauleiter Trump, Rubio, et al. would do such a thing.Or would they?Well, this week the Drumpf administration proposed that “[t]ourists from dozens of countries including the U.K. could be asked to provide a five-year social media history as a condition of entry to the United States,” if you can trust the notoriously woke BBC.The memo “warns that if any social media information is not listed, it could lead to both current and future visas being denied.”So, any of the news sources and fact-checkers I know in four continents could be denied entry to come here, because, perhaps, his wife and kids forgot to name me as a “contact.”But hold, what darkness through yonder window breaks:Could I be refused reentry to my own country if I forget, or refuse, to name one of my “foreign contacts”? Anyone I spoke to in another country?Let me quote Secretary of Bootlicking Marco Rubio, who posted on X: “For too long, Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights. Today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans. Free speech is essential to the American way of life — a birthright over which foreign governments have no authority.”Well, if free speech is “essential to the American way of life,” why have dozens of U.S. university professors been fired, suspended and/or investigated for saying a few kind words about Palestinians — refugees in their own land — or for criticizing the Israeli Defense Forces, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, for their continuing genocide in Gaza?And could U.S. newspapers and news services be prosecuted and/or denied travel visas for “fact-checking” any or all of the lies that drip daily from Drumpf’s vile mouth, such as:the price of prescription drugs has declined by 1,500% (so that if you were paying Big Pharma $1,000 a month for a prescription drug last month, today Big Pharma would be paying you $14,000 a month to buy it);threatening to criminally prosecute Apple if it did not remove its ICEBlock app from the internet, which merely informs citizens where and when Immigration and Customs Enforcement is conducting raids.By his own so-called “standards,” Trump himself could be denied entry to the United States, for repeatedly threatening people with death, including six members of Congress.So who is threatening whose free speech, and how, and why?We all know who, we know how, and we know why.Only a nation of cowards would accept this.Categories /
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