Hillary Clinton calls for Americans to be criminally charged for spreading 'propaganda'
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested earlier this week that Americans who promulgate allegedly Russian-backed "propaganda" should be civilly and even criminally charged.
Speaking to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Monday, just a day after a second assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, Clinton described her former political opponent as a "very dangerous man" and urged Americans to be outraged by him.
"We can't go back and give this very dangerous man another chance to do harm to our country and the world," she said.
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Now, Hillary wants to JAIL anyone who disagrees with her.
— Trish Regan (@trish_regan) September 17, 2024
She's jumped the shark. Shame on MSNBC for hosting such despicable nonsense. pic.twitter.com/RZIHfCQUoq
Clinton made an apparent reference to a recent U.S. Justice Department allegation that Russian state media producers funneled nearly $10 million to a company later revealed to be Tenet Media, which reportedly offered large sums to pro-Trump commentators such as Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and others, according to CNN.
Claiming some Americans both wittingly and unwittingly share such "propaganda," Clinton floated the idea that those who do so should in some cases be criminally punished, which could presumably include potential jail time.
"But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda," she said. "And whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrence because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial in the United States."
Clinton has been on a media blitz and conducting a national tour to promote her new book Something Lost, Something Gained, published on Sept. 17.
Clinton's sentiment echoes some of the rhetoric from other leading Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris and her 2024 vice presidential running mate, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Walz, whose government threatened 90-day jail sentences for lockdown violators and set up a hotline that allowed Minnesota residents to report their neighbors for alleged violations, maintained during a December 2022 interview on "The Reid Out" that there is no guarantee to free speech if it impinges upon elections.
Earlier in the interview, Walz pinpointed "misinformation" about COVID-19 and the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as particularly concerning.
"There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy," he said. "Tell the truth, where the voting places are, who can vote, who's able to be there. Watching some states continue to weaken the protections around the ballot, I think, is what is inspiring us to lean into this."
During a 2019 interview with CNN anchor Jake Tapper following a Democratic primary debate, Harris suggested the right to free speech on social media platforms such as X is a privilege and that Trump had lost his privilege and should be suspended for his alleged "witness intimidation" and "attempt to obstruct justice."
"He has lost his privileges, and it should be taken down," she said of Trump's Twitter account at the time. "The bottom line is that you can't say that you have one rule for Facebook, and you have a different rule for Twitter."
"The same rule has to apply, which is that there has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power. They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop," she added.
Trump's Twitter account was suspended in the wake of the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. However, it was subsequently reinstated after Elon Musk purchased the company and renamed it X.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed in a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee last month that the Biden administration pressured his company to effectively "censor" Facebook content related to COVID-19 and Hunter Biden's laptop.
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to [email protected]
