New Delhi: President-elect Donald Trump announced on Friday a series of initiatives aimed at protecting and expanding free speech rights across the United States.
Trump detailed his plan to dismantle what he described as a "censorship cartel," pledging immediate action upon his inauguration.
Here is the full text of Trump's speech
“If we don't have free speech, then we just don't have a free country. It's as simple as that, if this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and liberties will topple, just like dominoes, one by one, they'll go down.
That's why today, I'm announcing my plan to shatter the left wing censorship regime and to reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans. And reclaim is a very important word in this case, because they've taken it away.
In recent weeks, bombshell reports have confirmed that a sinister group of deep state bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left wing activists and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people.
They have collaborated to suppress vital information on everything from elections to public health, the censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed, and it must happen immediately.
And here's my plan.
First, within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization business or person, to censor, limit, categorize or impede the lawful speech of American citizens.
I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as Miss or dis information, and I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship, directly or indirectly, whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health, Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are.
Second, I will order the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new online censorship regime, which is absolutely destructive and terrible, and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified.
These include possible violations of federal civil rights law, campaign finance laws, federal election law, securities law and antitrust laws, the Hatch Act and a host of other potential criminal, civil, regulatory and constitutional offenses.
To assist in these efforts, I am urging House Republicans to immediately send preservation letters, and we have to do this right now to the Biden administration, the Biden campaign and every Silicon Valley Tech giant ordering them not to destroy evidence of censorship.
Third, upon my inauguration as president, I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk revising section 230 to get big online platforms out of censorship business.
From now on, digital platforms should only qualify for immunity protection under Section 230 if they meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness and non discrimination. We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism, while dramatically curtailing their power to arbitrarily restrict lawful speech.
Fourth, we need to break up the entire toxic censorship industry that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so called Miss and disinformation, the federal government should immediately stop funding all nonprofits and academic programs that support this authoritarian project, if any US university is discovered to have engaged in censorship activities or election interferences in the past, such as lagging social media content for removal of blacklisting those universities should lose federal research dollars and federal student loan support for a period of five years, and maybe more.
We should also enact new laws laying out clear criminal penalties for federal bureaucrats who partner with private entities to do an end run around the Constitution and deprive Americans of their first, fourth and fifth amendment rights. In other words, deprived them of their vote.
And once you lose those elections, and once you lose your borders like we have, you no longer have a country.
Furthermore, to confront the problems of major platforms being infiltrated by legions of former deep Staters and intelligence officials, there should be a seven year calling off period before any employee of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DNI, DHS or DOD is allowed to take a job at a company possessing vast quantities of us user data.
Fifth, the time has finally come for Congress to pass a digital Bill of Rights. This should include a right to digital due process. In other words, government officials should need a court order to take down online content, not send information requests, such as the FBI was sending to Twitter.
Furthermore, when users of big online platforms have their content or accounts removed, throttle shadow banned or otherwise restricted.
No matter what name they use, they should have the right to be informed that it's happening, the right to a specific explanation of the reason why, and the right to a timely appeal.
In addition, all users over the age of 18 should have the right to opt out of content moderation and curation entirely and receive and unmanipulated stream of information if they so choose.
The fight for free speech is a matter of Victory or death for America and for the survival of Western civilization itself.
When I am president this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large. There won't be anything left. By restoring free speech, we'll begin to reclaim our democracy and save our nation. Thank you and God bless America.”
Listen to the speech here:
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