Trump Makes Yet Another Empty Threat

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I’ve basically been asleep all day, but I see that the nitwit-in-chief has been busy:

President Trump is preparing to sign an executive order Thursday that could open the door for federal officials to try to penalize Facebook, Google and Twitter for the way they moderate content on their sites, according to two people familiar with the matter, opening a major rift between Washington and Silicon Valley with potentially dramatic free-speech implications.

This is, of course, just another shiny bauble. The president has no authority to penalize anyone for the way they moderate content and everyone in the White House knows it. But what better way to get reporters and editors in a lather than to make threats related to free speech? Trump will get headlines galore for this, and that’s all he cares about.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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