Staff Reports
Every time the left accuses conservatives of being a threat to the “free press,” it’s worth a reminder of what actual media crackdowns look like. Some Americans truly don’t realize how rare and precious the First Amendment really is. They’re too busy wringing their hands about President Trump giving harsh answers to their favorite CNN reporters. They throw around words like “authoritarian” and “silencing journalists,” but apparently have no idea what real repression looks like.
Here’s some reality: even one of Trump’s loudest media critics, Kaitlan Collins of CNN, has to admit that America is not Saudi Arabia. On a foreign trip with President Trump, Collins asked a tough question—not shocking, given her usual routine. But the Saudi Royal Guard completely lost it. They tried to ban her from the next event, hoping to shut down a reporter for doing her job. That’s what real censorship looks like—no due process, no debate, just a flat-out ban. Suddenly, those CNN reporters who liken their White House press briefings to “living under fascism” look pretty clueless.
https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/2021943212605165863
But here’s where it gets even more telling about our so-called “authoritarian” leaders. When the Saudi regime wanted an American reporter silenced, it was President Trump’s own Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, who stood up and said absolutely not. She defended Kaitlan Collins’ right to attend with the rest of the U.S. press, no matter what the foreign government wanted. Leavitt did this not because she agreed with Collins, and not out of friendship—frankly, no one would blame her for showing less kindness given the way these reporters treat conservatives at home. But that’s not how America works. Here, even our critics get a seat at the table. The freedom our press enjoys isn’t just some talking point; it’s the kind of thing people risk their lives for in other countries.
Yet the left doesn’t want to talk about that. They’d rather turn every Trump press conference into a pearl-clutching drama and pretend that telling off a CNN reporter is the same thing as government censorship. It’s almost as if their outrage is less about actual principles and more about scoring political points. Fake narratives about “authoritarian threats” at home collapse the second you compare them to the real deal overseas.
At the end of the day, this story exposes the absolute fraud that is the media’s anti-Trump narrative. When push came to shove, it was a Trump staffer defending the free press—not to gain brownie points, but because that’s what Americans do. Maybe the next time liberals cry about “democracy dying,” they should take a good look at themselves and ask: whose side are they really on?
