Marco Rubio is worried about freedom of speech. “People out there, they put a post,” he says, “and they – a cop comes knocking on their door: You’re going to go to jail for 60 days for posting something online.”
Terrible.
He knows what’s important, and that is not “attacking Americans who are exercising their First Amendment rights.”
Absolutely.
That would be great. However, he seems to be talking about Europe and the attacks on freedom of speech on this continent. He’s very concerned about just how bad things have got.
He admits it has been a problem in the USA until recently. Anti-vaxxers, racists and cranks of all sorts have been banned from Twitter and that is against freedom of speech. What’s more, it was the fault of the State Department. Therefore they are changing the State Department so that it better suits the interests of the US citizens.
Back to Europe and the EU Digital Services Act. This demands a basic level of respect for truth and decency, something which Twitter has routinely failed to offer. Musk is expected to be hit with a big fine for non-compliance with basically everything. It turns out this is the attack on freedom of speech that exercises Rubio more than any other.
Meanwhile in the USA, a Russian student – speaking anonymously, of course – describes the climate of fear in US universities as being “like Russia”.