President Trump Announced Executive Order That College Campuses Must Support Free Speech To Receive Federal Funding
Not really a breaking story but I want to report this and give my 2-cents on this because as a political commentator, I think it's important to show what I stand for.
President Trump attended one of the biggest right-wing circle-jerks called CPAC. There he mocked the Mueller investigation and complained how they've started investigating his finances and mocked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal. One thing that stood out to me was when he announced he will be signing an executive order that required universities to support free speech if they want to receive federal funding. This comes as a response to Hayden Williams, a conservative activist, getting punched in the face at Berkeley.
I support this idea. Yes Hayden should be allowed to speak. Same with Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, Ann Coulter, hell let David Duke speak. On that same token, let Kyle Kulinski speak, let AntiFa speak, let the new Black Panthers speak, let Bill Maher speak, let everyone across the board speak, because college is supposed to be an open exchange of ideas. This includes dumb and shitty ideas.
Having said that, let's get to Trump. I don't know what to expect out of this executive order because Trump is not only a bait-and-switch salesman, but a partisan hack. All it would take is college football players taking a knee during the national anthem and those federal funds will disappear like when Thanos snapped his fingers at the end of Infinity War. Like I said, this was done in response to a conservative activist was punched in the face. Had this been a leftist, he would've looked the other way. I know what some of you are thinking. "But none of this happens to the left." Actually there's a lie of omission to this. 75% of college censorship actually happens to the left. This is a fact that never gets reported. Especially not from the so-called free speech warriors on the right.
Make no mistake. Trump doesn't actually support free speech. He sued The Onion over a satirical article about him. He sued Bill Maher over what was meant to be a one-time joke about his dad being an orangutan. He wants to ban flag burning and he wants the NFL players who take a knee during the national anthem to be fired.
The one thing I will give Trump credit for is that he knows how to shore up his base. This is a point I will continue to hammer at because if the Democrats want to beat him in 2020, they need to shore up their base.