Tucker Carlson, “Domestic Terrorist”?
Two Anniversaries
We’re over a week late for Constitution Day this year — which means we’re overdue for the annual 5 Bullets censorship issue.
Or maybe we’re not that late after all.
As it happens, today marks a rather different anniversary — a disturbing departure from the Constitution’s guarantees of free expression.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. This year we begin by rewinding more than a decade — to the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign cycle.
No one remembers now, but at the time there was a moral panic about ISIS — or ISIL, or Daesh, or whatever that particular group of Islamist head-choppers was called — and the influence it allegedly wielded online.
It was right there in The New York Times…
Said Donald Trump: “We have to talk to [Internet CEOs] about, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people.”
Trump’s eventual opponent Hillary Clinton was of the same mind: “... we have to deny [ISIS] online space. And this is complicated. You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints, you know, freedom of speech, etc.”
The ISIS threat soon retreated. The threat to Americans’ free expression only grew…
The month of August 2018 marked a watershed: In one week, professional loudmouth Alex Jones was simultaneously “deplatformed” by Facebook, YouTube, Apple and Spotify on the theory he was engaged in “hate speech.”
At the risk of appearing alarmist, we devoted an entire edition of this e-letter to the topic, titled “After Alex Jones, Are We Next?”
This much was certain: What began with Jones absolutely did not end with Jones.
Time and time again, Big Tech execs were hauled before Congress and threatened with new taxes and regulations. Under duress, they imposed arbitrary and capricious rules that changed from week to week.
And then came COVID. The censors’ remit of “hate speech” expanded to include “misinformation.”
COVID gave rise to a “censorship industrial complex” led by the Biden White House. Its scope was alarmingly sweeping: Even expressing an opinion that the economy had tipped into a recession was cause for the ban hammer.
And not just censorship — financial cancellation, too.
Americans speaking up on the issues of the day found their YouTube accounts demonetized and their PayPal accounts cancelled.
Matters were so dire that we took up the ritual of an annual censorship issue throughout the Biden administration — in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
All of which I say to tee up the 2026 edition — just in case you think the following four bullets are taking partisan shots at Donald Trump.
Not so. It just happens to be a Republican administration in charge right now, indulging its own censorious impulses.
This is constitutional, not political…
Tucker Carlson, “Domestic Terrorist”?
As of this past spring, Tucker Carlson is on the Trump administration’s radar as a potential “domestic terrorist.”
Carlson was one of the central figures in our 2025 censorship issue. At a conference last year, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel accused Carlson and Candace Owens of anti-Semitism, and said they deserved the following treatment: “We can deport them, we can put them in jail. We can make their lives miserable. We can cut off their funding, and that’s what the Trump administration is doing for the first time.”
It seemed like a hollow threat — especially the part about deporting a U.S. citizen born to other U.S. citizens — but now a White House official has put some teeth in it.
One year ago today, President Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 — titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.”
NSPM-7 identifies three broad priorities as the administration’s counterterrorism targets — “narco-terrorists,” Islamist terrorists and “violent left-wing extremists.”
But the senior director for counterterrorism on Trump’s National Security Council, Sebastian Gorka, expanded that list during an interview in May with Breitbart editor in chief Alex Marlow.
Marlow: I wanna get your thoughts on any right-wing terror… Do you regard it as a threat at all or anything that's important to be considering right now?
Gorka: … I'm not sure that Nick Fuentes or Tucker Carlson are conservatives. If you are lauding Sharia law, if you are saying that there are Muslim states that seem to be better qualitatively than America in terms of freedom and prosperity, I'm not sure that means you're part of the conservative movement. So if you remove those individuals and you understand that they're not conservatives, what's left?
In the first place, that’s a vast distortion of Carlson’s previous remarks. Praising the prosperity and vitality of Gulf sheikdoms like the United Arab Emirates is not the same thing as “lauding Sharia law.”
But there’s a much broader point…
“Let’s be real: none of this is actually about extremism,” writes independent journalist Ken Klippenstein — one of the few reporters who’s covered NSPM-7 and its implications.
“It’s about the fact that Carlson, like Fuentes, recently broke with Trump — bitterly — over the Iran war. That's the real offense. So now they’re being cast as extremist threats.
“But to avoid alarming conservatives, the administration can't just say that — it has to first strip them of their conservative credentials, redefine them as something foreign-affiliated and dangerous and then go after them.”
And it’s not just about the Iran war.
As was becoming evident at the time of our censorship edition last year, it’s about the entire cohort on the right that finds fault with U.S. aid to Israel. That’s what — and who — the administration seeks to suppress. Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie.
But because they’re all U.S. citizens, it’s still easier for the moment to make an example of foreign nationals.
Which brings us back to the case of a Turkish grad student named Rumeysa Ozturk, also spotlighted in the 2025 censorship issue.
Eighteen months ago, six masked federal agents snatched Ozturk off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts because she…
… wrote an Op-Ed for the student newspaper at Tufts University.
There was nothing incendiary in her article, no celebration of Hamas or any other Islamist militant group — just an assertion that Israel committed war crimes, and a call for the university to pull its investments out of that country.
Nonetheless, Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted that Ozturk’s visa should be revoked because she wanted “to participate in movements that vandalize universities, harass students, take over buildings and cause chaos.”
Even though she did nothing of the sort. Guilt by association.
Here’s the update: In January a federal judge found that the feds hadn’t established grounds to deport her. The feds appealed, but in the end both sides asked that the proceedings be terminated. Ozturk finished her Ph.D. and returned to Turkey of her own accord in April.
As such, the courts had no chance to rule on the broader constitutional questions raised by her arrest. Rest assured there will be more cases where this came from.
The Disney “Disgrace”
Meanwhile the Trump administration’s legal jihad against ABC parent Disney (DIS) goes back to court in a few days.
The dispute began just over a year ago when late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a fatuous and unfunny crack about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Trump’s FCC chair Brendan Carr tossed aside his previously stated First Amendment principles and began threatening Disney with words that sounded like those of a mobster: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
At the time, Disney had important business requiring federal approval — a deal in which its ESPN unit was acquiring NFL Network while the NFL took a 10% equity stake in ESPN.
In addition, Nexstar Media (NXST) — owner of about 30 ABC affiliates in places like Nashville and Salt Lake City — had a major acquisition pending before Carr’s FCC. Not coincidentally, Nexstar pulled Kimmel from its ABC stations for several days after the controversy erupted.
As we chronicled at the time, Ronald Reagan’s FCC chair was aghast.
Mark Fowler pulled off several big acts of deregulation during his term in the 1980s. Perhaps the biggest was the scrapping of the “Fairness Doctrine” — a step the late Rush Limbaugh credited with opening the way for his local radio show to go national.
Of the Carr FCC’s general approach to regulation, Fowler lamented last year that “they’re trying to undo everything President Reagan did.”
Specifically in the Kimmel case, Fowler ripped Carr up and down: “His approach now is that freedom of speech is ensured by government oversight, really trampling the First Amendment rights of broadcasters for which President Reagan fought so long and hard.
“To me, it's personal as well as legal and public policywise. And he is a disgrace.”
This past spring, Carr launched an early license-renewal proceeding for ABC’s eight owned-and-operated local stations — allegedly because they engaged in “DEI” hiring practices.
Disney sued last month and a judge will hear the case on Oct. 6. The company’s legal brief says the FCC’s action is obvious retaliation for speech the Trump administration doesn’t like.
Really, is there any doubt?
Which brings us to a related development — the Trump administration kicking several media outlets off White House grounds this week.
CNN, Politico and MS NOW all had their press credentials yanked. In a social media post on Monday, Trump said the White House is “instituting an assault on FAKE NEWS.”
And with that statement, “Trump is clearly on the wrong side of the First Amendment,” writes independent journalist Matt Taibbi — best known for his “Twitter files” reporting that exposed the Biden administration’s censorship regime.
“It’s true that no one has a right to a press pass. It’s also true that presidents deny passes all the time for political reasons. The issue is that a president can’t say, out loud, that he or she is denying a pass for speech reasons.”
Exactly.
Yesterday a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order restoring the press passes that were pulled, while the case makes its way through the courts…
Words Are Not Violence
One of the worst things to come out of the “woke” movement was the claim that mere words constituted acts of violence.
The most extreme manifestation came during the insane summer of 2020 with a newsroom revolt at The New York Times. The paper had published an Op-Ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) calling for the deployment of troops to put down riots.
"It wasn't just an opinion,” said a NYT union activist, “it felt violent — it was a call to action that could hurt people.” The paper’s editorial-page editor resigned under pressure.
And yet the Trump administration is adopting the woke left’s “safety” rationale in its prosecution of former FBI chief James Comey.
Don’t get me wrong. Comey deserves to be in the dock — along with former CIA chief John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Together they framed Donald Trump for treason as part of the ridiculous “Russiagate” hoax.
But instead of pursuing a case that would actually air out the deep state’s dirty laundry, the Justice Department is opting for cheap theatrics playing to the MAGA faithful.
As you might be aware, the case surrounds this Instagram post of Comey’s in May of last year.
86 = getting rid of. 47 = the current president.
And on those grounds, a federal grand jury indicted Comey last April on charges that he “did knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the president of the United States.”
If this prosecution succeeds, all manner of provocative political expression will be criminalized.
It would set an entirely new precedent, overturning the landmark Brandenburg v. Ohio case of 1969.
Clarence Brandenburg was a Ku Klux Klan leader who gave a speech threatening violence against certain government officials. That earned him a conviction under Ohio’s “criminal syndicalism” law.
The Supreme Court overturned it unanimously. This was its rationale…
The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a state to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
“Imminent lawless action” is the operative phrase there. The journalist and civil libertarian Gleen Greenwald often cites the example of standing outside someone’s house with an angry mob and urging them to burn it down that instant. That’s imminent lawless action.
Brandenburg wasn’t doing anything of the sort. There was time for other people to express different opinions about whether those government officials were deserving of violence before any violent acts could take place.
If Brandenburg is overturned, it opens the door for ambitious prosecutors to go after anyone, of any political persuasion, who’s ever made an intemperate remark on social media vaguely suggesting a public figure meet with some sort of bodily harm.
Or even invoking violent metaphors, as I demonstrated less than 48 hours after the attempt on Trump’s life in 2024.
“Keep America Free”
The preceding list is not inclusive.
There’s any number of other free-speech outrages for which we don’t have room today — for instance, the guy in Texas sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for transporting a box of anti-government pamphlets that did not advocate any sort of violent action. (It appears that NSPM-7 was a guiding document in the prosecution.)
We’ll wrap it up by getting back to first principles. Here’s the opening to Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Constitution Day column this year…
The freedom of speech and of the press is not a gift bestowed by a president, Congress or a federal agency. It is a natural right of all persons. The First Amendment does not create that right; it prohibits the government from infringing upon it. The ability to think, speak, write, criticize, ridicule, persuade, offend, dissent and challenge those in government is among the most fundamental preconditions of the exercise of human liberty.
It is also indispensable to personal happiness. A person who cannot speak his mind, question authority, express unpopular ideas or tell the government that it is wrong is not fully free. And free speech is essential to the survival of the republic because a government that cannot be criticized cannot be effectively held accountable.
And as we did last year, we give the last word to the late Charlie Kirk…
P.S. A quick check of the market’s temperature going into the weekend…
The major U.S. stock indexes are all in the green. The S&P 500 is up about a half percent at 7,736. Precious metals are flat, gold a little under $4,300, silver a little over $64. Crypto is holding on tight to its recent gains.
The interesting action is in oil and bonds. Until this week, there’d been a predictable pattern for much of 2026: Rising oil prices fueled rising inflation expectations, which fueled rising Treasury rates.
That pattern broke this week as oil sold off.
Today, for instance, U.S. crude futures are down 2.5% to $92.19. But Treasury yields keep rising — the 10-year note at 5.2% and the 30-year bond at 5.51%. Both are at levels last seen during the George W. Bush administration.
Whatever Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is doing to suppress longer-term interest rates, it isn’t working. And the consequences will follow through for everything from mortgages to corporate borrowing. More next week…
