'Really illegal': Kristi Noem issues a warning

I want to pick up on a point I made yesterday, about how the president and his co-conspirators, inside and outside the regime, do not mean what they say. They do not care about the truth behind their words, only whether those words can achieve a desired outcome.

In his inaugural speech, in January, Donald Trump said that “after years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.”

Last week, however, he said unfavorable news coverage is “really illegal.” He told the White House press corps that “I’m a very strong person for free speech. The newscasts are against me. They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad. See, I think that’s really illegal.”

Trump suggested as much again after the return of ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. “Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who is not funny, and who puts the Network in jeopardy by playing 99 percent positive Democratic GARBAGE,” he said. “He is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major illegal campaign contribution. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 million. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers. Let Jimmy Kimmel Rod in his bad ratings.”

He didn’t mean a word he said about freedom, unless he meant freedom for him and his friends, not for perceived enemies. (By the way, there were 14 million YouTube views of Kimmel’s show, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That’s close to a record. Also: Jimmy Kimmel is an entertainer, not a Democratic operative, nor is his show a “major illegal campaign contribution.”) All Trump cared about was whether his words would lead to an outcome that he wants, in this case, violating the freedoms of a comedian who pokes fun at him.

Remember the context in which this all started. The regime and its media allies cynically exploited the death of a demagogue. They coordinated a nearly instantaneous assault on “the left,” long before any material evidence was available, accusing Trump’s critics of abusing their freedoms to create conditions of hatred and fear that ultimately inspired 22-year-old Tyler Robinson to kill Charlie Kirk.

“It is a vast domestic terror movement,” Stephen Miller said of the “radical left.” “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, eliminate and destroy this network and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”

But state and federal investigators have not found a link between Robinson and “the left.” “There is no evidence connecting the suspect with any left-wing groups,” one source in the investigation told NBC News. “Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk’s ideology personally offensive.”

Moreover, Robinson’s crime might not rise to the level of federal terrorism charges, undermining the suggestion that he is part of “a vast domestic terror movement" A second source told NBC News that “it may be difficult to charge Robinson at the federal level,” citing the fact that he didn’t cross state lines, Kirk wasn’t a federal officer or elected official, and he was killed “during an open campus debate.”

(I had suggested that Robinson was associated with the groypers, a group of online trolls who are racist to the core, openly and without reservation. They believed Kirk was too liberal. In hindsight, that suggestion was premature. Though Robinson came from a maga family, evidence so far, including a relationship with his trans roommate, indicates that he was truly disturbed by Kirk’s hate-mongering. Still, his reasons remain unclear, which is often a feature of shooters.)

That nothing so far connects Kirk’s killer to “the left” will not stop the regime from continuing to portray political speech as political violence – from equating the president’s critics to terrorists. It will simply move on, as it did today, when a lone gunman killed a person, and seriously wounded two more, at an ICE facility in Dallas. All three victims were detainees. No ICE agents were injured. The shooter killed himself.

Like after Kirk’s murder, before any material evidence came to light, the regime immediately suggested “the left” was to blame. Vice President JD Vance said “this obsessive attack on law enforcement, particularly ICE, must stop.” US Secretary of Homeland Security KristiNoem said “while we don’t know [the] motive yet, we know that our ICE law enforcement is facing unprecedented violence against them.”

Then, as if frustrated by the fact that no one has yet found evidence of a “vast domestic terror movement” on the “radical left,” the evidence … suddenly appeared! Kash Patel, who was a conspiracist and podcaster before he became director of the FBL, posted on Twitter a photograph of five bullets. On one of them was written the words “anti-ICE.”

I don’t know if the shooter was anti-ICE. I presume an investigation will bear that out. What I do know is the victims were immigrants, not ICE agents. I know the regime is looking for a reason, any reason, to crack down on liberty. And I know something else: that the regime is clear about its goal. In a followup, Noem suggested today’s attack was a warning to the president’s critics: do not criticize the president.

“Their rhetoric about ICE has consequences,” she said. “Comparing ICE day-in and day-out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police and slave patrols has consequences. … The violence and dehumanization of these men and women who are simply enforcing the law must stop.”

I’ll end with what I hope is a running theme – that the regime does not care about the truth behind its words, only whether those words can achieve a desired outcome. Noem said ICE agents are “simply enforcing the law” without saying they are also simply breaking it.

Yesterday, for instance, ICE agents held a 5-year-old girl hostage in pursuit of her dad, who has been in the country peacefully for 20 years. On Monday, DHS announced that ICE will deliberately break California’s new law forbidding feds from wearing masks, a statute designed to protect individual liberty and ensure accountability.

Why? Because assaults on ICE are up by “1,000 percent.”

We will break the laws of a sovereign state to protect ourselves, but your complaints about us breaking those laws must stop. Indeed, such complaints might be something that the government should “identify, disrupt, eliminate and destroy” in order to “make America safe again.”

They do not mean a word they say.