Hello everybody, thank you for tuning in to the weekly report,

Weaponization of Politics and American Tradition.

President Donald Trump is hardly the first political figure

who has had the legal and policy processes weaponized against him.

In fact, there is a long and shameful history of US politicians

and bureaucrats weaponizing governmental powers against their political opponents.

The First Amendment was not even a decade old

when fear of influences on America by French agents

was used to support the passage of the alien and sedition acts.

This outlawed false, scandalous and malicious writings

against the United States government, Congress, or the president

and made it illegal to conspire to oppose any measure

or measures of the government of the United States.

The weaponization of politics is another example of how

hysteria over alleged foreign threats leads to less liberty.

The claim that opponents of the US government policy

were serving interests of France is an early example.

Sadly, critics of the US government policy have been smeared

for spreading disinformation to benefit hostile foreign powers

many times since.

During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln

oversaw the shutting down of newspapers

...