Episode 10 - Free Speech Consequences of Schumer’s Senate Resolution

On Episode 10 of the Reagan Faulkner Show, the host explores the controversial consequences of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s recent resolution to formally condemn right-wing influencer Nick Fuentes. The episode opens with a summary of Fuentes’s political influence, including his nightly live streams and the America First platform, emphasizing that despite mainstream media labeling Fuentes as a white nationalist and anti-Semite, he publicly denies supporting violence. The host stresses that Schumer’s resolution marks a historic moment: it is the first time the Senate has considered condemning a private citizen for their views, raising alarms about overreach and the risk of governmental censorship.

The discussion highlights the unintended effect of Schumer’s action, suggesting it may actually strengthen Fuentes’s base and turn him into a martyr for free speech. The host points out this federal reprimand is likely to energize Fuentes’s followers and amplify his movement, as government censorship often rallies supporters around the censored figure. This move is framed as political theatre—a tactic designed to benefit the Democratic Party in upcoming elections, and a way to cast Republicans who oppose the resolution as extremists or racists. The host warns that the precedent set by such actions could be dangerous, making it easier for politicians to target and silence private citizens, journalists, and commentators regardless of their political affiliation.

In closing, the episode calls on listeners—especially Republicans who champion free speech and individual rights—to oppose the resolution and defend the First Amendment, regardless of their views on Fuentes. The host argues that protecting freedom of expression is fundamental to American democracy and cautions that once government censorship starts, it becomes a slippery slope that threatens all citizens. The Senate is encouraged to refocus its efforts on substantive legislation instead of divisive, symbolic resolutions that endanger constitutional rights.

Transcript

0:04

What's up guys? And welcome back to the Reagan Faulkner Show. Today we're going to be talking about First Amendment rights. And really what that looks like in a world full of influencers and independent

journalists instead of 5: 0:14

00 Nightly news. And, you know, one channel like we had decades ago, it's the political sphere is changing. And with it comes the ways that politicians are choosing to use legislation. So what I'm talking about here is last week. Last Thursday, on November 20th, Chuck Schumer announced that he would be pushing forward a resolution and trying to bring it to the floor during Thanksgiving week to condemn Nick Fuentes. I'm sure many of you have heard the name and have your own opinions about Nick Fuentes, so I'm just going to give you the straight facts about him. This is straight facts all about Nick Fuentes. Not my opinion on him, not any of that. But Nick Fuentes is a right wing influencer. He does nightly live streams on Rumble, and he discusses political topics, current events, and he's kind of doing a deep dive into how much he believes Israel is involved in US politics. And if there's foreign play in our politics, or whether it's completely US based, whether it's completely influenced by only people in the US. At home, he runs his platform is called America First. So he is in favor of being America first and only promoting policies that are America first. So most mainstream platforms label Fuentes as a far right, white supremacist, misogynistic, white nationalist, anti-Semitic individual. He's got a lot of labels hanging out around his name right now, but he has vehemently defended his position that he does not support political violence, he does not support any type of violence, and he does not fault any one group for any political or cultural issue that the United States is facing. So when he's talking about Israel, he's not faulting everybody. When he's talking about other groups. He's not faulting everybody. Normally he has a specific politician or a specific business owner, a specific person that he's really talking about in each of his streams. So that's the background on Fuentes. You can look up all the negative stuff about him because all of that is circulating out there. But this is just the straight facts about Fuentes. Regardless of how you feel about him, Schumer's resolution will be the first time that a private US citizen is being condemned by the federal government by the Senate, and Schumer's goal is to address what he characterizes as rising antisemitism and rising right wing Extremism. But what he's really doing is making Fuentes a martyr. What he's really doing is giving Fuentes and giving Fuentes his base. They call themselves the Groypers. He's giving Fuentes, and he's giving the groypers what any political commentator would die to have. And that is federal censorship. By giving Nick, by giving Nick, by giving him this, this reprimand, I guess you would call it this resolution, this censorship, however you want to characterize it. His followers are going to rally around him even more, and he's he's going to have an even larger base. He's going to have an even larger platform, an even larger movement, because he's being censored by one of the most prominent examples of a far left career politician. I mean, now that Biden's out. Schumer kind of took his place. Schumer and Pelosi are right. They're neck and neck on who's the most liberal career politician. And Fuentes has a large group of voters who really pride themselves on and one. One of the big things that Fuentes advocates for is the importance of passing the torch to the next generation. So he has this huge base of voters surrounding him that are in favor of term limits. No career politics putting America first. And Schumer hasn't done any of that. So giving this to Fuentes for any Republican that doesn't like him is just the complete opposite of what you would want to do. It is just going to enrage the base and make it. It's really going to make them feel that the opinions and positions that he's pushing are even more valid, because he's being censored by a career politician, a left wing career politician. And then also, if we don't even want to care about the cultural repercussions of this, because if you support Nick, then you're going to be in favor of it and be like, oh, it's just going to prove his point. If you hate Nick, then you're going to be like, oh, we don't want to do that. So that part's kind of arbitrary depending on how you feel about him. But the real issue at hand, and what I want to get into, is that by censoring Fuentes at a federal level, Schumer is going to sit one of the most dangerous precedents that the United States can set, which is the fact that the US government can start condemning private citizens. That's absolutely insane that the US government can just say, oh, this person, this influencer that's really popular on TikTok or Instagram or whatever, we don't like what they're saying. So we're gonna put out a resolution condemning them. That's an extremely dangerous precedent to set. That is extremely, extremely dangerous. Anything that you say that you post, that you stream, that ends up on the internet, that you can be victimized by the US federal government, by our legislative representatives, that we as the people elect, that have a duty to us, not to an agenda. They have a duty to those that elect let them. And if this process continues, this is really what we face. If Schumer moves forward with this, and if he gets traction on this, the US government is going to be able to start condemning journalists. They're going to start be able to start condemning reporters and newscasters and people in third parties. So those that work for CNN or MSNBC or Fox News, they might be in a position where they could lose their job if their employer says, oh, well, you just got a resolution passed condemning you by the Senate. We we can't employ you anymore. We don't know how we feel about that. That's an extremely dangerous precedent to set in the United States. The land of freedom, the land of free speech. Just think about the way Fox News treated Tucker Carlson, and then think about how much worse that treatment would have been if they could have cited a specific piece of legislation that was passed. Independent journalists think about people like Nick Shirley and others that have been covering the Anti-ice riots, that have been covering Antifa, that have been covering the protests that we saw in Dearborn, Michigan recently. Think about them and how they might start facing repercussions. If a specific party is in power, a specific group of individuals that are in power that don't like what they're reporting on, that don't like their independent journalism, it's going to be the same as the mainstream media that we have now, where these organizations that are loyal to a party, or that are loyal to a lobbyist or that are loyal to some mega company or whatever it may be, they don't report the true news anymore because they have stakes in the agendas that are being pushed. Think about that and think about how this precedent will do the same thing for the social media that we value for TikTok and X, where there's very little censorship because there will start being censorship once the US government starts censoring people. Once our elected individuals start censoring private citizens, we're going to have huge consequences on our hands as United States citizens. The First Amendment is there for a reason to be, to be honest. I mean, it's elementary, but it's there for a reason. It is there to protect your thoughts, your ideas and your expressions, your religious expressions from government overreach and intervention. It is not there to protect me from saying, oh, I don't like what you're saying. No, it's to protect me from the government. That is why our founders put that in place to protect private US citizens from the government, from governmental overreach. And this is that this is literally that by condemning an individual, it is a complete violation. To be clear, it is a complete violation of Fuentes's First Amendment rights. And again, he hasn't called for violence on anybody. He hasn't threatened anybody. Yes. He has made questionable remarks. He has made remarks that I personally don't agree with. He has made some other points that I do agree with. And he he can't be censored because you don't like what he says. There's a lot of stuff that Fuentes has said that I am like, oh, that is not a good thing to say, but guess what? He's got a right to say it. And even though I don't agree with what he says, I will defend it to my personal death. I will defend somebody else's right to say what they want to say, regardless of how I feel about it. Because we are in America and we have a right to say these things, and we have had military members, we've had our veterans go overseas and die in order to defend the right to say this. It's no different than when I see a furry at school. Do I want to see a furry at school? Absolutely not. I have no interest in going to school and seeing someone dressed up like a cat on a leash. I do not want to see that, but at the end of the day, somebody fought for them to have the right to do that. Somebody died for them to have the right to do that. And somebody did the same thing for Nick Fuentes. And Chuck Schumer has no right to be elected by by citizens, by legal U.S. citizens, and then to go and condemn a fellow U.S. citizen for using his First Amendment right. That is vile and it is sick and it is wrong, and it is just a complete violation of his constitutional rights. And I think it's really cheap, to be honest with you all. It's really cheap that this is the same man that has been leading the party of No Kings all year, the same person that's been calling Donald Trump an authoritarian tyrant, the same party that's been protesting Donald Trump as this authoritarian dictator for the past year. Now they want to censor a private U.S. citizen? It's the same party that demanded Facebook and Twitter retract any posts or statements about the 2020 election, or about Covid. The same party that celebrated Donald Trump being deplatformed from Twitter. This is the same party. Do we really want them to be the ones setting the precedent about stuff like this? Do we really want them to start censoring people, even though they picked the most radical of the right wing influencers? Do we really want them to have the power to do that? Because once it starts, it doesn't stop. It'll become precedent. It'll become one of those things like what we've seen in the Supreme Court where, oh, it's precedent we have to build based off of that. And it's just going to be a slippery slope of the US federal government being able to condemn and censor and silence private American citizens. And Schumer's motive is really it is political in nature, to be quite honest with you. It's driven entirely by the democratic quest to claim the 2026 midterms. Schumer has stated that his motivation is to draft this resolution because Donald Trump stated that Tucker Carlson can do whoever he can do an interview with whoever he wants. That's what Donald Trump said. He said, I like Tucker. I think Tucker's a great guy because he said nice things about me. He can have an interview with whoever he wants. And this was in reference to Tucker's interview with Fuentes about a month ago. Schumer said, quote, the president of the United States declined to condemn Nick Fuentes hateful views and defended Tucker Carlson's decision to give Fuentes a platform. Donald Trump's refusal to condemn Nick Fuentes ideology confirms that white supremacy and antisemitism have deep roots within the Republican Party. By bringing the resolution to the floor, Schumer is just hoping to have Republicans vote in opposition of it. And then when they do, he can be like, look, look, look, look. All of you are anti-Semites. All of you are white supremacists. All of you are far right extremists. And then at that point, he can push the narrative that the Democratic Party is the complete opposite vote for us in 2026, blah, blah, blah. We know the drill. We've we've seen varying forms of this play out for honestly, forever. It's it's nothing new, but it is completely misleading because Republicans do need to vote against this because it's a violation of the First Amendment, not because they agree with Fuentes or anything like that, but because it's a violation of the First Amendment. And it's completely untrue. It's completely misleading, and it's a political stunt that will save the Democratic Party for a brief period, but completely undermine the legislative process and the importance of passing real legislation. The government needs to get back to work. They were shut down for 45 days, and for Schumer to frolic around passing arbitrary resolutions that won't do anything except set dangerous precedents for the censoring of private Americans. It's completely childish. They need to get to work. Super Tuesdays in March. They need to just wait. There's no reason to be starting all of this in November. But in contrast, because of the conservative infighting, the Republican infighting, the civil war that we're seeing in our platform and our movement right now, this bill has a really strong chance of passing unanimously, which, again, just furthers the consequences that if it passes, there's going to be this precedent that we could condemn private US citizens. And by creating this precedent, it's just setting the stage for silencing any opposing views, for silencing any party, for silencing candidates, for silencing authors, for silencing streamers and journalists, or anybody who has an opposite view than the party in charge. It's going to be like a government shutdown. It's going to be a political power move that they're just going to start playing. I mean, is it going to be useful? Absolutely not. But it's going to be a political power move that undermines our First Amendment, which is just not American, not right, and not what we stand for. The disdain towards Nick Fuentes should not be enough to establish this dangerous precedent in the United States and in the US Senate. It should not be enough to silence free speech and allow government overreach to censor private citizens. Republicans, I'm talking to you all now as the party of free speech, as the party of individual rights, as the party of small government. Y'all have a duty to vote against this. Y'all have a duty to not let this fly. Y'all have a duty to call your senators and say, hey, this is a violation of that man's First Amendment. I may not like him, or you might like him. Depends on who you are. But it is his right to say these things, and this is a violation of his First Amendment rights. And again, it's just a last ditch effort, honestly, for Schumer to save his reputation. And, you know, he shut the government down for 45 days. He's trying to save his reputation. He's old. He's probably not going to run again. He's just trying to have that last ditch effort to save himself. But regardless of how you feel about Nick Fuentes, this is wrong and everybody can see this. And again, the Senate has way more important things to do post shutdown. Schumer has been completely useless. We all know it. He's been completely useless. He talks a big talk. He tries to pass legislation. But like what has he actually done besides be a burden in the side of Republicans? For literally decades he has been there for like 40 years, and now he's trying to call Trump a king and protest no kings and all this, but he's trying to censor a private citizen. This needs to stop. Senators need to get back to work. They need to start passing legislation that actually benefits the American people instead of stripping them of their First Amendment rights. Americans, if you allow this radical overreach without calling it out, we have truly lost what it means to be Americans and what it means to fight for the ability of all Americans to have the right to liberty, the right to free speech, the right to have free expression, the right to have religious expression. We've lost what it means to fight for our First Amendment. We really, really have. And it's up to you to make sure that Americans continue living and having this First Amendment right and this ability to have free speech, because once we lose it, it doesn't come back. Thank you all so much for joining me today. I look forward to seeing you on the next one. If you want more content, remember to check us out on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X. That's going to be at the Wilmington Standard and at the Reagan Faulkner Show. Or check out our websites ReaganFaulkner.com and the Wilmington Standard. Com thank you all so much and see you on the next one.