May 18, 2022 2 min read

David Ball in his May 15 op-ed (Truth: Clorox to Democrats) discusses two topics – free speech and truth telling – and throws them together in a fashion that does not do justice to either.

First, whether Donald Trump belongs on Twitter is an important issue for advocates of free speech. Twitter is a private company, not controlled by the Democratic Party and suffered a $5 billion loss in its market value after banning Trump. Nonetheless, many free speech advocates, including Democrats, believe that the public has an especially strong interest in hearing what political figures have to say. If the former president has deranged or odious beliefs, that may be important information for voters to know. On the other hand, there must be a red line when a Twitter feed incites violence or disrupts a public health crisis.

Unfortunately, Mr. Ball strays from this important free speech debate and begins attacking Democrats as authoritarian “speech police” and fabricators that, if true, would make Vladimir Putin proud. The Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board attacked by Mr. Ball is designed to counter Russia, China and other adversaries who have used social media to push falsehoods at U.S. audiences. It has nothing to do with a Democratic attempt to limit domestic free speech, as he alleges.

On the subject of truth telling, the 30,573 false or misleading claims made by Trump during his White House tenure far outweigh the Hunter Biden laptop episode or the attempt to show collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Trump’s misstatements and lies are beyond dispute. Both the media and federal prosecutors have investigated the examples cited by Mr. Ball and taken appropriate actions that are not challenged by most Democrats.

It is interesting that Mr. Ball does not give credit to the bipartisan Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection as another example of providing important truth telling to the public. In today’s divisive climate, it is not helpful to confuse free speech issues with the role of government, the media and the courts in getting to the truth.

Both political parties are guilty of using free speech to propagandize information that is beneficial to them and hurtful to the other party. However, our open democracy bows to neither fear nor favor in investigating and truth telling all political improprieties.

Gary Stout

Washington