By John Ubaldi of “Ubaldi Reports”

For the past four years, we have heard President Trump was a fundamental threat to American democracy and had to be removed immediately or else our Republic would forever be changed, unfortunately the real threat comes from the Democratic Party!

With the openly hostile and contentious relationship Trump had with the media, how would America have reacted or how would the media have responded if the President’s allies in Congress had sent a letter to cable companies CEO’s in 2017 on why they still allow progressive news affiliates to still broadcast?

Then continue to imagine a Republican run committee in Congress openly staging a hearing on the societal menace of fake news and why it’s the responsibility of government and businesses who should rein in an openly hostile press.

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This situation would have resulted as if a nuclear explosion had gone off and the media along with their Democratic allies would have screamed to the highest mountain top that this represents an existential threat to the very foundations of American democracy.

The media and the Democratic Party would have hailed that America is heading toward authoritarian rule as President Trump and the Republican Party have trampled on the very foundations of our constitutional democracy. The very aspect of our constitutional system which is enshrined in the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

“Democracy dies in darkness,” as this is what precisely Democrats in Congress did at the end of February, but the media acquiesced with silence or tact approval.

On February 22nd, two Democrat California U.S. Representatives Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney sent a letter insisting that 12 cable and tech CEOs drop all contracts right-of-center media outlets including Fox News. Days later the Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing bout “disinformation and extremism” in conservative media, with the only extremism be held or on display was the Democratic Party’s continued hunger for regulating and policing a free press.

These same two Congressional representatives wanted to know what “response” they intended to take to the “right-wing media ecosystem” that is spreading “lies” and “disinformation” that enable “insurrection” and provokes “non-compliance with public health guidelines.” Specifically, they asked each CEO: “Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax and OANN . . .? If so, why?”

Rep. Mike Doyle, of Pennsylvania, who chairs the subcommittee on communications and technology, declared in opening remarks that “it is the responsibility of this subcommittee to hold these institutions”—meaning press outlets he doesn’t like – “to a higher standard.” He said later that “more free speech just isn’t winning the day over the kind of speech that we’re concerned about.”

Democrats carefully chose witnesses that could precisely lay the rhetorical foundation for why the press needed to be restricted. One of the witnesses was Kristin Urquiza, whose father died of coronavirus and who spoke at the Democratic convention against Donald Trump.  In her words, she said that “the media didn’t pull the trigger” in her father’s death, “but they drove the getaway car,” because he watched and listened to news that downplayed the virus.

During this hearing the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board reported that Chairman Rep. Frank Pallone generously conceded that the First Amendment protects speech that is “controversial” but distinguished “misinformation that causes public harm.” Apparently, Mr. Pallone wants someone, perhaps the government, to determine what constitutes public harm and when speech causes it. Would two years of false Democratic narratives about Russian collusion with Mr. Trump qualify as public harm? How about apologias for riots in the streets last summer?

Once committee witness was Emily Bell of Columbia Journalism School put it, “there has to be a will among the political elite and the media elite and the technology elite to actually do the right thing, as it were.”

Is this what America wants to have the tech companies and businesses deciding what is acceptable free speech, basically cancelling speech they don’t like doing the bidding of government who can’t.

During the committee hearings Republican members and outside groups shouted censorship but Eshoo brushed them off then responded back that “The First Amendment, my friends, starts with four words: Congress shall make no laws,” and she, Anna Eshoo, had no intention of enacting a law to shut down conservatives.

Wall Street Journal Political commentator Kim Strassel mentioned that she was merely asking “strong, important questions”—i.e., whether private regulated companies understand that (if they know what’s good for them) they’ll do the dirty work for her, thereby saving her the hassle of complying with the Constitution. She was just asking.

For years Democrats have been pressing “social media companies” what are their plans on reining in “disinformation,” which is meant to silence alternative voices or opinions.

Currently social media companies of Twitter, Facebook, and other have acquiesced to this demand. During the 2020 presidential election, Twitter blocked the account of the newspaper the New York Post for publishing a story of the nefarious business dealings of Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s business dealings with China and Ukraine.

As this was going on Google, and Amazon decided to drop Parler a platform for conservatives similar to Twitter, and Instagram from their app stores.

Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University wrote in a recent blog post that members of Congress are now pushing for public and private censorship on the internet and in other forums. They are being joined by an unprecedented alliance of academics, writers and activists calling for everything from censorship to incarceration to blacklists. For example, an article published in The Atlantic by Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods called for Chinese-style censorship of the internet, stating that “in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong.”

Turley continued that much of the effort by politicians and activists has been directed at using Big Tech to censor or bar opposing viewpoints, seeking to achieve indirectly what cannot be achieved directly in curtailing free speech. Congress could never engage in this type of raw content discrimination between news organizations under the First Amendment.

What Democrats in Congress are trying to do is to exert influence on private companies to limit free speech. These same Democrats are admonishing cable providers to explain what their “moral” criteria for allowing tens of millions of Americans the rational for accessing Fox News and other networks.

The Eshoo-McNerney letter never references free speech or a free press, but instead forces companies to respond if they will impose any sort of moral judgement on news being presented that the public can readily access.

The late Supreme Court Jurist William O. Douglas stated that “Ideas need expression; to drive them underground would be our one most dangerous subversion.” Democrats and a complicit media who should be keeping a watch on government slowly the nation is witnessing a free people who are giving up their freedom, and once lost those freedoms are difficult to regain.