Dems Can’t Take A Joke, So They’re Trying To Outlaw Free Speech

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., wants to make one thing perfectly clear: She has never said Sydney Sweeney has “perfect [breasts].” Nor has she accused her fellow Democrats of being “too fat to wear jeans or too ugly to go outside.”

The Minnesota leftist attempted to clear the air earlier this week in a New York Times opinion piece headlined, “Amy Klobuchar: What I Didn’t Say About Sydney Sweeney.” 

Klobuchar wrote that she is the victim of a hoax, a “realistic deepfake.” Some trickster apparently put together and pushed out an AI-generated video in which Klobuchar appears to make (hilariously) outrageous comments about Sweeney’s American Eagle jeans ad — after liberals charged that the commercial is racist and an endorsement of eugenics. 

‘Party of Ugly People’

The doctored Klobuchar appears to be speaking at a Senate committee hearing, She demands Democrats receive “representation.” Of course, the satirical video has gone viral. 

“If Republicans are going to have beautiful girls with perfect ti**ies” in their ads, we want ads for Democrats, too, you know?” the fake Klobuchar asserts in the vid. “We want ugly, fat bitches wearing pink wigs and long-ass fake nails being loud and twerking on top of a cop car at a Waffle House ‘cause they didn’t get extra ketchup.”

“Just because we’re the party of ugly people doesn’t mean we can’t be featured in ads, okay?” the AI Amy implores. “And I know most of us are too fat to wear jeans or too ugly to go outside, but we want representation.” 

She appears — and sounds — so sincere.  But Klobuchar wants you to know it certainly was not her saying such “vulgar and absurd” things. That’s why she’s urging Congress to pass laws to ban such AI videos, which would be as absurd as social justice warriors calling American Eagle white supremacists for paying a blue jeans-clad, beautiful actress to say she has great jeans. 

Any such law would certainly and rightly be challenged in court. 

‘Joke Police’

Last year, the Democrat-controlled Hawaii legislature passed a bill banning the kind of AI-generated content that’s put a bee in Klobuchar’s bonnet. The law imposes criminal and civil penalties for posting digitally modified content that “risks harming the reputation or electoral prospects of a candidate in an election.” 

“Now think about that for a minute, isn’t the whole point of a campaign to harm the electoral prospects of a candidate or to change the voting behavior of voters in an election? It’s outlawing politics, basically,” Ryan Bangert, senior vice president for strategic initiatives at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) said on a recent episode of The Federalist Radio Hour. 

The Christian litigation and advocacy organization is representing The Babylon Bee and Hawaii voter Dawn O’Brien in a lawsuit against what ADF calls a “draconian law.” Hawaii’s assault on parody is similar to a California law signed by far-left Gov. Gavin Newsom following the release of an AI-generated video of the Democratic Party’s stand-in presidential nominee, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, satirically announcing her campaign. 

“We’re used to getting pulled over by the joke police,” said Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon in a press release.  

Last October, the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of California issued a preliminary injunction against implementation of the law, citing Supreme Court precedent that “illuminates that while a well-founded fear of a digitally manipulated media landscape may be justified, this fear does not give legislators unbridled license to bulldoze over the longstanding tradition of critique, parody, and satire protected by the First Amendment.”

Earlier this month, ADF attorneys made their arguments for protecting the time-honored practice of parody in particular and free speech in general. Bangert said a ruling is expected soon. He’s confident of victory. 

‘Incompatible with Free Speech’

Big Brother California and Hawaii seem to be taking a page from European Union, which last year put in effect the benign-sounding Digital Services Act. As The Federalist’s Elle Purnell reported earlier this year, the law ensures speech that the powers-that-be deem “hateful” can be punished across the continent. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has blasted the law as “incompatible” with the “free speech tradition.”

Bangert said the Digital Services Act imposes myriad mandates requiring social media platforms to take down whatever deputized content checkers or flaggers — many of them members of left-wing NGOs — deem inappropriate. Larger online platforms must either comply or face a fine of up to 6 percent of their global annual revenue. 

“What we’ve seen from the Digital Services Act is there aren’t reliable protections in terms of protecting freedom of speech, free discussion, free discourse,” Bangert said. 

More sinister, the European Commission is mulling a mass surveillance proposal that would give government authorities the power to scan every chat message before being sent. As Reclaim the Net reported: 

“Italy, Spain and Hungary have been in favour of mandatory chat scanning from the start. France could tip the balance since blocking the plan requires four countries representing at least 35% of the EU’s population. Paris has moved from tentative support to saying it could ‘basically support the proposal…’”

‘Worth the Cost’

Free speech has taken a beating in the United Kingdom, where 51-year-old army veteran Adam Smith-Connor, was convicted for the thoughtcrime of praying silently near an abortion clinic. He was praying for his unborn son, a victim of abortion 25 years ago. Last October, a UK court sentenced the veteran to a conditional discharge, and ordered him to pay prosecution costs of £9,000. ADF International is supporting Smith-Connor, who is appealing his conviction. 

“Free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” Vice President J.D. Vance warned in an address in February to world leaders in Munich. He pointed to the Smith-Connor case, asserting that “basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular,” are in the crosshairs. 

Liberals like Klobuchar and Newsom, too, are targeting free speech in the United States with legislation they insist is meant to protect Americans from what they see as the great scourge of political parody. Bangert said their arguments are dishonest at best. What the politicians fear, he said, is criticism “and they want to stamp it out whenever they can.”

The First Amendment advocate added that their ostensible protections  are putting time-honored individual liberties in peril. 

“There will always be those who believe freedom of speech isn’t worth the cost,” the First Amendment advocate said. “Nothing good comes without a cost.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.