Matt Gaetz says the First Amendment was “harmed gravely” by January 6 prosecutions
Published
Citation
From the January 23, 2025, edition of OANN's The Matt Gaetz Show
MATT GAETZ (HOST): A lot of people who were caught up in this mess really believe that the First Amendment, association rights, free speech rights were harmed gravely by these prosecutions and the overuse of criminal law to scare people about the MAGA grandmother living next door. Now that we've had the pardons, I wonder how much of it you think has really been restored. What would Brandon Straka say is like the status of free speech in America today?
BRANDON STRAKA (GUEST): Well, I think it's a work in progress and we have to keep going. I mean, when I look around and I see that even today, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is now wanting to be a part of MAGA. The head of Google, it seems, is wanting to be a part of MAGA and where we're going forward with each other. But I want to kind of, you know, wait and see and believe it when I see it because, you know, Facebook deleted the WalkAway campaign shortly after January 6th with no explanation whatsoever. So, I would like to actually see some action. I want to see restoration of accounts. I want to see the restoration of speech. I want to see these things change before I'm willing to say, you know, "Everything has been corrected and things are where they should be."
GAETZ: No, I think you're so right that we're in a continuum right now. It's such an important point to double tap. We have not had full restoration. There are entities that must be restored. There are people who still must be restored. And I think that that has to be something we endeavor upon through the entire duration of this Trump presidency.