
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 presidentĀ posted the artificial intelligence (AI) video on Truth Social Saturday, which consisted of Trump wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet over a āNo Kingsā protest, appearing to dump excrement on demonstrators. Carlson asserted at the āThis is the Turning Point Tourā at Indiana University that there was a distinction between mocking people and barring them from public discourse.
WATCH:
āIf you support that First Amendment right so much and you support the idea that the lesser powerful shouldnāt 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 heās the more powerful and theyāre the lesser powerful,ā the questioner said.
āSo you can say, āI think itās ugly that the president of the United States is posting naughty videos on his X account or whatever.ā Okay, fine. What Iām defending is the sacred, God-given right of every person to say what he believes. Thatās called free speech,ā Carlson responded. āThatās whatās enshrined in our First Amendment. If you can name any example of the administration abridging that, I will agree with you 100% ⦠But I donāt think that youāve thought deeply enough about the difference between making fun of someone and preventing him from speaking. Thereās a meaningful difference.ā
The questioner appeared to claim she disagreed with Carlsonās characterization of her comments before he interrupted her to clarify.
āYou said that because Trump posted a naughty cartoon on Twitter, heās against the First Amendment,ā Carlson said.
āHeās against the protest, which is an example of practicing the First Amendment,ā the questioner replied.
Carlson disagreed.
āNo, you can certainly make fun of a protest without preventing the protest from happening,ā he said.
āThatās an unacceptable way for the president to be acting though, because he is the president of the United States,ā the questioner said. āHe can change peopleās course of action.ā
The crowd booed the questioner before Carlson concluded his argument.
āou can make the case that he shouldnāt have done that because itās unbecoming or whatever. Fair, fine. We can debate it. But I donāt think that youāre making the case he was abridging anyoneās 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.ā
Moreover, Carlson distinguished Trumpās post and endeavoring to cause an individual to lose their job, arguing only the latter was āa meaningful attempt to stifle speech.ā
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 āThe Don Lemon Showā Monday that the post supposedly signified the presidentās desire to assault protesters who demonstrate against him.
āNo Kingsā protests occured throughout the nation on Saturday, with organizers claimingĀ that around 7 million anti-Trump protesters demonstrated to āreject authoritarianismā and declare that America does not belong to ākings.ā
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