Plenty of great analysis around how asinine it is to defend Trump on free speech grounds amid the latest indictment. Jamie Raskin and others have of course nailed it.
But I think this quick bit should help:
From an article somewhere back in 2020:
"We ought to come up with legislation that if you burn the American flag, you go to jail for one year. One year,” Trump said, claiming that he’s “a big believer in freedom of speech,” but calling flag burning “desecration.”
So if somebody speaks out against war or whatever while burning a flag as part of the expression, that's a crime? But if somebody uses words to coordinate and drive a conspiracy aimed at overturning an election, the entire end-to-end behavior is fully protected speech? That's one mighty contorted pretzel. Except in the flag burning example, Republicans want to punish ACTUAL protected speech; so yet more Orwellian projection afoot.
IMO, the media should make every Republican attempt to thread that needle. They need to squirm.