Seneca Project founder Tara Setmayer had strong words for Republican strategist Melik Abdul while speaking on CNN’s “NewsNight” Friday. Abdul attempted to defend Donald Trump following his comments that media outlets — including CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post — are operating in a manner that is “totally illegal.”
“Are we really having this conversation?” Setymayer asked. “That we’re saying that what Donald Trump just said as the president of the United States standing there in the Department of Justice, saying that freedom of speech and the freedom of the press and all that is illegal? This is insanity!”
She went on to point out that freedom of the press is enshrined in the Bill of Rights, “where our founding fathers wanted to make sure that you had the freedom to be able to report without the government coming down on you, in fear of being prosecuted for that.”
“This is 2025,” she continued. “This is not 1789 when you had the Alien and Sedition Acts and all of that that were used against people who were critical of the government. Are we going back there?”
Setmayer then pointed out that if Barack Obama, Joe Biden or Bill Clinton had made similar comments they would have been met with massive backlash. Abdul attempted to deflect and said that such language would not be “typical” of those leaders but is of Trump before he moved on to “the weaponization of the Justice Department” as a talking point.
On Friday, Trump blasted the media as “totally illegal” during a speech delivered at the Department of Justice.
“The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and MSDNC, and the fake news, CNN and ABC, CBS and NBC, they’ll write whatever they say,” Trump said. “And what do you do to get rid of it? You convict Trump.”
“It’s totally illegal what they do,” Trump told DOJ employees. “I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal.”
The First Amendment to the US Constitution states, “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.”
In other words, Americans have the right to practice the religion of their choosing, the right to express their own ideas without government interference, the right to publish and share information, the right to gather and protest, and the right to ask the government for assistance without fear of punishment.
Watch the exchange at Mediaiate.
