Kerry recently told the globalist World Economic Forum that the First Amendment is a “major block to the ability to be able to just, you know, hammer” disinformation “out of existence.”
The rest of the article displays a word salad that only marginally continues to make this point. I don’t think any of this contains misquotes.
Now I realize Kerry has no more influence than any other failed Presidential candidate who should have won, but he’s 80 now and, never renowned for intellectual prowess, has now descended into nutbar territory, or senescence, or something. He needs to stop talking and sink back into well-earned obscurity.
Thats just right wing revisionist bullshit. Really!?! The takeaway from the Bush-v-Kerry era is that Kerry lacks intellectual prowess LOL! Kerry was always a perfectly intelligent skilled politician, who would have made a far far better president than Bush.
He was however completely lacking in charisma and couldn’t inspire his way out of a paper bag. He is the kind of doomed candidate who the democrats loved to nominate, and stands in stark contrast to the current ticket. This is a complete non story, a 80 year old private citizen who is not running for office, makes a poorly worded statement about the 1st amendment
If someone outside the United States asked you, “Why can’t the American government ban disinformation?” you might reply that the First Amendment means that people can, within limits, say what they want, even if they’re spreading disinformation. That may be the kind of context in which he made his statement.
Since the words First Amendment were not within the quote marks, I assumed someone was paraphrasing him to make him appear to say something he didn’t
Nope. He said it.
I honestly thought after he said that, that he would follow it up with, “We need to educate voters.” or “That is why a person needs a variety of sources.” or “People need to critically examine their resources and the agendas involved.”
Nope. At best he went off topic but you could, if you wanted to, interpret his follow up as the Democrats need to win to change the 1st Amendment to get rid of disinformation.
Being smarter than Bush Jr. isn’t much to brag about, and Kerry’s 2004 loss indicates questionable political skill. The political landscape in 2004 was far simpler than it is today. 20 years later Kerry is no longer capable of handling the current environment, if he ever was at all. I think he spoke out of frustration. After 8 years of this nonsense he should have realized that was the goal of the other side.
Political skill in terms of what’s required to govern effectively, not the ability to get elected, which is a completely different set of skills and in common with so many democratic candidates over the years, he was completely lacking.
Fortunately they do seem to have come around on that. Harris seems to actually taking the whole “get elected” thing seriously
I googled “John Kerry 1st amendment” and got a bunch of hits from credible sources and journalists like Fox news and Sean Hannity.
And that was without the term “globalist”.
I mean if we are gonna talk about the first amendment maybe we should be talking about the views of someone who actually is running for president, rather than some old guy who never going to do any governing ever again
Like maybe the fascist who is currently running at about 50-50 in the polls and has said on numerous occasions he’s gonna curtail the first amendment? (And make himself dictator on day one, arrest his political opponents, etc. etc.)
That’s exactly what he said in the video you linked to. Here is the entire quote, transcribed as best as I can:
I don’t see how much clearer you can be when the question is “how do you battle disinformation in order to implement policies to address climate change?”
First you make it clear that you can’t just ban the information in American due to our expansive free speech rights. And then point out that the only way to make effective change is to win enough votes to enact legislation to address the issue of importance.
ETA: The question being discussed here is at about the 45 minute mark in that video, btw, in case you are looking for it. He is clearly talking about making policy changes in the area of climate change, not making changes in the first amendment.
Like I said, you could if you wanted to interpret “change” into “change the first amendment” when contextually makes sense. Why should one assume that he linked change to climate and not the 1st Amendment.
FTR: I agree with you but he did leave it ambiguous enough that it is easy to say. “He said what I wanted him to say.”
From your source, he was talking only about flag-burning which after Texas v. Johnson is protected speech. And of note: the Flag Desecration Amendment regularly gets the 2/3 support needed in the House so some Dems are on board as well.
Because the entire 1-hour talk - hell the entire one-week event - was about combating climate change! You don’t have to bend over backwards to give his remarks the completely innocuous interpretation that he obviously intended.
But instead, agitators pick out a minute from a 1-hour talk, spin it in worst way possible, and astroturf it on their news aggregators until folks like the OP (who I assume is acting in good faith) thinks Kerry has “descended into nutbar territory, or senescence”.
This whole thing actually just reinforces the point that if you only get your news from certain sources, and refuse to find the original video and use your own brain, its very easy to be fooled into believing things that aren’t true. Like that John Kerry wants to change the first amendment to combat climate change.
That was just his most recent outburst on the matter he has consistently called for weakening of the first amendment throughout his career, not just flag burning.
But even just considering this recent incident he explicitly said he wanted to curtail the first amendment. Kerry(who again is not running for office and not going to be joining any future government) was talking about the first amendment in the context of something plenty of people agree with (stopping misinformation). Yet it was still reported as “Kerry and the Democrats hate the first amendment!”
Trump clearly actually hates the first amendment, yet you don’t see “Trump and the GOP hates the first amendment!” headlines. There is a massive double standard in the press.
Be honest, how many Americans are going to listen to a one-hour speech versus a 45 second sound-bite?
Also, his grammar was horrible as one would assume “change” with no other qualifiers refers to the last thing he talked about - in this case the 1st Amendment and not climate.
Defend Kerry all you want but that minute was not spoken and he’s a politician so he should know that you cannot give your opponents the opportunity to do what they did. All he had to do was say “climate change” and this is not an issue.
Again exactly as with Kerrys comments, plenty of people on both sides of the aisle think we should combat misinformation.
Yet Kerrys comments were not reported as “Kerry thinks we should combat misinformation”, it was reported as “Kerry and Democrats hate the first amendment!”
It’s an utter bullshit story (again Kerry is an old guy who is not running for office of any kind, his views on combating misinformation are as relevant to the 2024 election as mine or yours) and shows the insane double standard the media has with Trump