GOP’s idea of free speech is you must praise Charlie Kirk or they will destroy you

We need to stand up for free speech!

The charade that the Republican party supports free speech has ended with their collective reaction to the murder of Charlie Kirk. And I don’t mean random MAGA people clamoring for people to be fired or worse for daring to say something they don’t agree with about Kirk. No, it’s coming from the Trump officials to GOP members of Congress to state officials.

In fact, on Monday afternoon, Vice President JD Vance declared while hosting Kirk’s podcast in his place that if you see someone “celebrating” Kirk’s murder, not only should you “call them out,” he added, “hell, call their employer.” In other words, if a person is saying something about Kirk that deviates from the GOP party line, destroy that person’s life. This is perfectly sums up today’s GOP. (see clip below)

On Monday night, Attorney General Pam Bondi made a jaw-dropping comment on Fox News that the Department of Justice is considering bringing charges after a now-fired Office Depot employee refused to print flyers advertising a vigil for Kirk. Bondi told Sean Hannity that, “We can prosecute you for that.” Really?! I’m a lawyer, and I can tell you I’ve never heard of a crime for not agreeing to allow a person at a private business to print photos, etc. But to the GOP you are now required to join in celebrating Kirk or they will come for you.

There was also Secretary of State Marco Rubio who gleefully told Fox News last week that if any person says or writes something they construe as critical of Kirk, he will ban the person from entering the United States and deport those here on a visa. Rubio told the faux network, "We should not be giving visas to people who are going to come to the United States and do things like celebrate the murder, the execution, the assassination of a political figure.” He added, “And if they're already here, we should be revoking their visa.”

Keep in mind this is the same Rubio who attempted to revoke a green card and deport people legally in the nation who advocated for Palestinian human rights because he opposes that viewpoint. This is just another in the pattern of Trump regime officials seeking to silence dissent.

But Rubio was not the only Trump cabinet official calling for destroying people’s lives if they uttered anything but praise for the hate peddling Kirk. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy demanded on the official social media account for the U.S. Dept of Transportation that two American Airlines’ pilots who had made negative comments about Kirk must be fired. Duffy wrote, “This behavior is disgusting and they should be fired.” Duffy then went to warn all airlines to apply the same penalty noting, “Any company responsible for the safety of the traveling public cannot tolerate that behavior.”

GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee demanded that a Middle Tennessee State University employee should be fired after writing he had “ZERO sympathy” for Kirk’s death. Yep, the person simply indicated a lack of sympathy for Kirk. In response, the school did as the GOP Senator demanded and fired the person. Blackburn then took a victory lap writing, “The firing of this MTSU employee was the right decision, and it sends a clear message that this kind of reprehensible behavior must not be tolerated.”

Over in South Carolina, a high school teacher wrote online, “Thoughts and prayers to his children but IMHO [in my honest opinion] America became greater today. There I said it.” In response, two GOP members of Congress from South Carolina, the always horrible Nancy Mace and William Timmons demanded the teacher be fired for daring to say something they didn’t approve of. And as demanded, he was fired.

Mace took it even further Monday calling on Dept of Education “to cut off federal funding from any elementary, secondary, and post-secondary educational institution refusing to hold teachers or administrators accountable” if they dared say things about Kirk she and MAGA don’t agree with.

Not to be outdone in the war on free speech, GOP Rep. Randy Fine—who spends most of his time peddling hate towards anyone who opposes the genocide in Gaza—wrote online: “Those celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk must be thrown out of civil society.” He then called on people to report to his offices if they see any person who does that and “I will demand their firing, defunding, and license revocation.”

Rose Pugliese, a GOP Colorado state lawmaker demanded Gov. Jared Polis fire a state employee who had accused Mr. Kirk online of being “a white man who spews horrid” words “against every marginalized community.” While GOP Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana said that he planned to use “Congressional authority” to force tech companies to “ban for life” any person who “belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk.”

Without a hint of irony, Trump’s Secretary of the Navy John Phelan told the members of the Navy and U.S. Marines who are risking their lives to preserve our freedoms that if they dared use freedom of speech to display “contempt” (yes, that is the word he used) toward Charlie Kirk, the person would be “dealt with swiftly and decisively.”

We’ve also seen Trump’s U.S. Secret Service place an agent on leave who expressed negative opinions about Kirk. The agent had written online, that Kirk "spewed hate and racism on his show ... at the end of the day, you answer to GOD, and speak things into existence. You can only circumvent karma, she doesn’t leave."

Oh, the free speech party on parade. This doesn’t even include the pressure to silence free speech by the MAGA influencers like the vile Laura Loomer and Chaya Raichik—who runs Libs of TikTok—calling on people to “scour” the internet for any language about Kirk they find offensive.

It’s this climate that has caused countless people to lose their jobs out of fear that the Trump regime or other Republicans in power will come after them. Public school teachers who wrote anything even construed as anything but praising Kirk were fired in a swath of states including Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas.

On Friday, Nasdaq said it fired an employee for their remarks about Kirk because they violated company policy. Major corporations such as Microsoft and Delta Air Lines are taking action against employees who have made social media posts critical of Kirk's own views.

MSNBC fired Matthew Dowd last week as an on-air commentator for saying Kirk “pushed” hate speech. And on Monday, we learned that award-winning journalist of The Washington Post, Karen Attiah was fired by the newspaper over “unacceptable” social media posts she made in the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

As Attiah noted today, “My most widely shared thread was not even about activist Charlie Kirk, who was horribly murdered, but about the political assassinations of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman, her husband and her dog.” She added, “I pointed to the familiar pattern of America shrugging off gun deaths and giving compassion for white men who commit and espouse political violence.”

To be clear, private companies have every right to sanction or even fire people if their words violate company policy. But we live in a nation where corporations must fear Trump will use the full force of the DOJ and other agencies to target them for views he doesn’t approve of. We’ve seen that with his efforts targeting media outlets, universities, law firms and the list goes on.

The right claims to be concerned with free speech. But as we’ve seen the past week from the Trump regime down, the right will use all its power to silence speech they oppose. If we don’t push back hard now, next the GOP will silence all dissent in our country because that is what fascist movements have long done.

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