The cast of MSNBC’s Morning Joe welcomed The Age of Grievance author Frank Bruni to their Thursday show to discuss his book that argues that the far-left and the far-right share several common traits, including their desire to portray themselves as the main victims in society. Another common trait Bruni has assigned to both sides is an opposition to free speech, although one of his examples of conservative censorship was quite underwhelming, as he seemed to confuse simply defunding public broadcasting with yanking it off the air.
Host Joe Scarborough recalled a conversation he had with someone closer to the MAGA-sphere who offered up multiple reasons why Democrats lost in 2024. Scarborough didn’t deny the arguments but tried to apply them to Republicans as well, “But these five things, like you said, it was a grievance against the Democrats, when in fact, and also the refusal to broker dissent. You could say the same thing about Republicans. Talk about that: how they really mirroring each other.”
Scarborough claimed problems include being stuck in echo chambers and not tolerating dissent, but Bruni wanted to focus on a different one, “A million percent. And Joe, you just mentioned free speech, which is, I think, one of the best examples, right? If you go back to Trump's campaign and if you look at what all of his allies and supporters were saying. They were talking about the way in which the left, with all of its political correctness, its wokeness had censored speech, punished people for speaking the wrong way and essentially taken us very far away from the First Amendment, right?”
Bruni went on to claim that what Trump has done is far worse, “Now, we have the Trump Administration and it's even further in the other direction. They are not advocating free speech. They are just advocating a different kind of speech and a different mechanism, and different kinds of censorship. You know, we're all in the media here. I've never seen an attack on the media from a White House, from an administration that matches what the Trump Administration is doing with litigation in court. It's serving notice to every media organization that you displease the president at your peril.”
Moving on to public broadcasting, Bruni added, “With the defunding of public broadcasting and stuff like that, there we have a supposed bid for free speech that is not free speech, but is a grievance-driven attempt to control the narrative and to silence those people who are supposedly your oppressors. It is the supposedly oppressed becoming oppressors to a degree beyond what they were experiencing before.”
That is a rather silly argument. Since Trump ordered that PBS and NPR no longer receive taxpayer money, those outlets are as anti-Trump as they have ever been. To say PBS and NPR must conduct their advocacy without taxpayer dollars isn’t any more censorial than objecting to Fox News receiving federal money.
Sign the petition to help us defund another MSNBC in PBS and NPR at defundpbsnpr.org.
Here is a transcript for the May 15 show:
MSNBC Morning Joe
5/15/2025
9:36 AM ET
JOE SCARBOROUGH: But these five things, like you said, it was a grievance against the Democrats, when in fact, and also the refusal to broker dissent. You could say the same thing about Republicans. Talk about that: how they really mirroring each other.
FRANK BRUNI: A million percent. And Joe, you just mentioned free speech, which is, I think, one of the best examples, right? If you go back to Trump's campaign and if you look at what all of his allies and supporters were saying. They were talking about the way in which the left, with all of its political correctness, its wokeness had censored speech, punished people for speaking the wrong way and essentially taken us very far away from the First Amendment, right?
Now, we have the Trump Administration and it's even further in the other direction. They are not advocating free speech. They are just advocating a different kind of speech and a different mechanism, and different kinds of censorship. You know, we're all in the media here. I've never seen an attack on the media from a White House, from an administration that matches what the Trump Administration is doing with litigation in court.
It's serving notice to every media organization that you displease the president at your peril. With the defunding of public broadcasting and stuff like that, there we have a supposed bid for free speech that is not free speech, but is a grievance-driven attempt to control the narrative and to silence those people who are supposedly your oppressors. It is the supposedly oppressed becoming oppressors to a degree beyond what they were experiencing before.
