Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson told a questioner at a Tuesday Turning Point USA (TPUSA) event that she was mistaken to suggest that President Donald Trump posting a video targeting a protest posed a threat to freedom of speech.
The president posted the artificial intelligence (AI) video on Truth Social Saturday, which consisted of Trump wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet over a “No Kings” protest, appearing to dump excrement on demonstrators. Carlson asserted at the “This is the Turning Point Tour” at Indiana University that there was a distinction between mocking people and barring them from public discourse.
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“If you support that First Amendment right so much and you support the idea that the lesser powerful shouldn’t be suppressed by the more powerful, I would think that you would be against the president of the United States going on his social media and posting AI videos of him dropping shit on the protesters as he’s the more powerful and they’re the lesser powerful,” the questioner said.
“So you can say, ‘I think it’s ugly that the president of the United States is posting naughty videos on his X account or whatever.’ Okay, fine. What I’m defending is the sacred, God-given right of every person to say what he believes. That’s called free speech,” Carlson responded. “That’s what’s enshrined in our First Amendment. If you can name any example of the administration abridging that, I will agree with you 100% … But I don’t think that you’ve thought deeply enough about the difference between making fun of someone and preventing him from speaking. There’s a meaningful difference.”
The questioner appeared to claim she disagreed with Carlson’s characterization of her comments before he interrupted her to clarify.
“You said that because Trump posted a naughty cartoon on Twitter, he’s against the First Amendment,” Carlson said.
“He’s against the protest, which is an example of practicing the First Amendment,” the questioner replied.
Carlson disagreed.
“No, you can certainly make fun of a protest without preventing the protest from happening,” he said.
“That’s an unacceptable way for the president to be acting though, because he is the president of the United States,” the questioner said. “He can change people’s course of action.”
The crowd booed the questioner before Carlson concluded his argument.
“[Y]ou can make the case that he shouldn’t have done that because it’s unbecoming or whatever. Fair, fine. We can debate it. But I don’t think that you’re making the case he was abridging anyone’s First Amendment of criticizing. And this is part of the derangement of the left, that criticizing somebody is the same as committing violence against them or preventing them from speaking. That is not true.”
Moreover, Carlson distinguished Trump’s post and endeavoring to cause an individual to lose their job, arguing only the latter was “a meaningful attempt to stifle speech.”
Democratic social media influencer Harry Sisson, who was the main target of the feces in the video, also told former CNN host Don Lemon on “The Don Lemon Show” Monday that the post supposedly signified the president’s desire to assault protesters who demonstrate against him.
“No Kings” protests occured throughout the nation on Saturday, with organizers claiming that around 7 million anti-Trump protesters demonstrated to “reject authoritarianism” and declare that America does not belong to “kings.”
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