As Donald Trump openly promotes his authoritarian plans, his political party is following his lead.
Trump, who says he’d be a “dictator for one day” if he returns to the White House, has introduced a style of personal and petty illiberalism that conservatives seem to relish.
And just as Trump has vowed to crack down on the free press, right-wing officials — from a party that purports to champion “free enterprise” — look increasingly eager to do the same with other private businesses that they see as enemies.
Last week, South Carolina Treasurer Curtis Loftis told CNBC that “it ought to be illegal” for companies to boycott X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Several companies have suspended advertising on the site after owner Elon Musk promoted a version of the racist and antisemitic “replacement theory.”
“This whole idea that these billionaires gang up like hooligans and try to destroy a licensed, taxpaying company, a company that has employees — that’s just wrong,” Loftis said, adding that he was standing up to the “billionaire class.”
To state the obvious, Musk is also a billionaire. And what Loftis says is hooliganism — aka businesses choosing not to advertise on X — could also be described another way: free will.
But the South Carolinian isn’t alone in his illiberal ponderings.
After Trump confidant Kash Patel vowed to go after news organizations if Trump regains the presidency, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, said on CNN that members of the media have indeed earned scrutiny for their “collusion” with Big Tech before the 2020 presidential election — a point corrected by Jake Tapper.
Vance and other Republicans have baselessly alleged that tech companies’ moderation of conspiratorial content related to Hunter Biden in the lead-up to the 2020 election amounted to government censorship — and have suggested this is why Big Tech should be regulated, the underlying suggestion being that private companies should be…
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