I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the To the Contrary podcast. Now, some of you may actually be old enough to remember when Donald Trump ran for president as the free speech president as the guy who was running against cancel culture. In fact, talked about cancel culture all the time and how he was going to make it possible for Americans to exercise their First Amendment rights. Well,

that was then we've seen, in fact, what the president has been doing. In fact, Greg Lukiano from

fire wrote, this administration uses power against enemies. It uses lawsuits. It uses regulators.

It uses funding threats. It uses access gatekeeping. It uses merger pressure.

It uses whatever lever is closest to hand. And if that lever breaks, it grabs another one and then another and then another until it's grasping at straws or seashells.

A reference to, of course, last week's most absurd

criminal prosecution ever, actually indicting the former FBI director for taking pictures of

seashells. And, you know, they're going to be historians who are going to look back and say,

no, no, seriously, what was that about?

No, it was about C. Charles.

And, of course, this takes place the same week where the president of the United States takes time off from waging war in the Middle East to go after Jimmy Kimmel.

So let's talk about that.

Okay. Kimmel. So let's talk about that. Now, joining me on the podcast today, who else, other than Greg Lukianoff, who I just

quoted the president of fire, which is the foundation for individual rights and expression.

So, Greg, thanks for coming back on the podcast. I appreciate it.

Good to see you, man. So, I mean, we can really connect the dots here. You know, Kimmel and Comey,

you wrote, if it looks like an attempt to chill speech by Trump, it probably is. This is an,

here's what I wanted to ask you. It feels as, and we're going to walk through a lot of the things that Donald Trump

and the Trump administration and the FCC are doing to chill criticism.

We've had bad moments in the past in American history.

We survived the American midnight of the Wilson administration.

We know what happened, you know, with Richard Nixon.

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