House speaker has a galaxy-brain moment about free speech

House Speaker Mike Johnson, shown in January, thinking very hard.

House Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t understand why Americans aren’t more grateful for all the new freedoms they have under President Donald Trump. You know, despite his administration’s relentless attacks on free speech and all that.

"They are decrying the country that allows them to engage in this activity,” Johnson said on Friday during a press conference, referring to the “No Kings” rallies planned for this weekend to protest the Trump administration’s cruel agenda.

“The last time I checked, Americans have more freedom right now to express themselves and speak their minds after Republicans took over and ended the years of having millions of Americans’ voices systematically silenced during the Covid pandemic years and the left’s cancel culture,” he continued. 

“It is the Republicans that restored your right to share and to speak your mind. That's the first and most obvious irony of the ‘hate America’ rally,” he added.

President Donald Trump and the Republican Party regularly threaten those who don’t parrot party talking points. Trump’s White House has used any chance available to it to undermine the foundational freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Johnson’s comments are a further attempt to deflect from his party’s failure to govern. The GOP has erroneously tried to link its government shutdown to the long-planned protests, in an attempt to distract from Trump’s unpopular and destructive mismanagement of the country.