Under Trump, Criticism Is Now Criminal

Jim Naureckas

In a videotaped statement (AP, 9/10/25), Trump said that comparing people like Charlie Kirk to Nazis is "directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today."

After the killing of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump (9/10/25) escalated his war on free speech, calling for criminalizing criticism of himself:

It's a long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.

This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.

To spell it out: "Demonizing"—which is to say, criticizing—people with whom you disagree is "directly responsible" for Kirk's death. Note that this is about criticizing people that you disagree with—"you" presumably being one of "those on the radical left"—as Trump has built a wildly lucrative political career out of demonizing those he disagrees with, and he's not about to stop now. It's the "wonderful Americans" like Kirk whom you aren't supposed to criticize.

Trump promises "this kind of rhetoric"—the "radical left" kind—will "stop," because the government will "find each and every one who contributed to this atrocity." This includes all those who used their speech to "go after our judges," cops and "everyone else who brings order."

This is, in short, a declaration that the idea of free speech is over—despite Trump going on to list "free speech" first among "the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died." Where once you had the right to criticize those who "bring order," now such reckless rhetoric is punishable as direct support for "terrorism"—a word that under the US legal system authorizes draconian police powers.

'Violent rhetoric has consequences'

A response (X, 9/24/25) to Homeland Security's complaint that people were comparing ICE to the Gestapo, secret police and slave patrols.

Interestingly, the particular strain of criticism that Trump singles out—though not exclusively—is when "wonderful Americans" like Kirk are compared to "Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals."

The Department of Homeland Security made a similar complaint on X (9/24/25) after sniper Joshua Jahn reportedly shot at an ICE facility in Dallas, killing two detainees:

This vile attack was motivated by hatred for ICE. This shooting must serve as a wake-up call that violent rhetoric about ICE has consequences. Comparing ICE day-in and day-out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police and slave patrols has consequences.

ICE is a masked paramilitary group that operates without badges or warrants, whose leadership considers it a crime to record or identify its members. It rounds people up on the basis of ethnicity, or targets them for their political views, sending them without due process to foreign concentration camps.

Which historical precedents are we allowed to compare such an organization to?

'Our lineage' vs. 'wickedness'

Stephen Miller charged that "leftist groups and nonprofits had created 'terrorist networks' that led to Kirk’s murder" (New Republic, 9/15/25).

Speaking of Nazi comparisons, people heard similarities between the eulogy given by chief Trump advisor Stephen Miller at Kirk's funeral and the rhetoric of Third Reich propagandist Joseph Goebbels (National, 9/22/25; Snopes, 9/25/25). Miller's speech drew a heavy-handed contrast between "what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble," and the "forces of wickedness and evil." The "good," the forces of "the light," were seemingly genetically defined, with "ancestors" and a "lineage":

Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry…. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.

And the other side was so dehumanized, they were erased from reality:

And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.

Note again the emphasis on the speech of the enemy: They "incite," they "foment." This was not a throwaway line; speaking to Vice President JD Vance, who was guest-hosting Kirk's podcast (New Republic, 9/15/25), Miller said that he was on a mission to shut up the left: “The last message that Charlie sent me," he claimed, "was that we needed to have an organized strategy to go after the left-leaning organizations that are promoting violence in this country.” Calling the left "a vast domestic terror movement,” Miller vowed:

With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people.

'Targeted intimidation'

Analyzing the White House's "Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence" memo (9/25/25), Jeff Sharlet (Scenes From a Slow Civil War, 9/26/25) notes that it "provides authorities with potential cause to prosecute not everyone but anyone."

Those words seemed to become legal action in the form of an "executive memo" (9/25/25; Scenes From a Slow Civil War, 9/26/25) about the new war on anti-fascism signed by Trump, but lacking the ranting digressions characteristic of words actually written by the president. The memo includes this chilling passage:

This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society. A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies—including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources and predicate actions behind them—is required.

"Political violence" is defined here as not just actual "violence," but also "targeted intimidation, radicalization [and] threats"; in other words, speech. This speech is "designed to silence opposing speech," which only makes sense if it's understood that the speech that deserves protection and the speech that needs to be investigated by law enforcement are spoken by two different kinds of people; free speech is a right that only belongs to the right people (FAIR.org, 3/4/25). If you're the wrong sort of person, using your speech to "silence" the good kind of speech—which is to say, to criticize it—well, then, we have to kill free speech in order to save it.

Another thing these "criminal and terroristic conspiracies" need to be criminally investigated for is using speech to "change or direct policy outcomes." This is said to "prevent the functioning of a democratic society"—when it's actually key to the functioning of a democratic society.

The ability to use your freedom of expression to try to change what the government does is, in fact, why the First Amendment was put in the Constitution in the first place. But clearly we are in an era where the executive branch no longer sees the First Amendment as any kind of meaningful constraint.