Newsmax, the pro-Trump website, recently published a column calling for pardons for Assange and Snowden. "If there is any way to thoroughly get back at the left over the next month, President Trump should make it a priority to pardon those individuals whose clemency would get the attention of the deep state," wrote Kenny Cody at Newsmax. "For the deep state has worked against this president and his administration unlike any other previously." Marjorie Taylor Greene, a newly elected Republican representative from Georgia who has been criticized for being a QAnon supporter, also tweeted her support for pardons for Assange and Snowden.
A smattering of Assange supporters are echoing the line of these pro-Trump pundits and right-wing politicians.
For example, Assange's partner, Stella Morris, said on Fox News recently that she wants Trump to pardon Assange to protect him from the deep state. George Christensen, a member of Australia's parliament, sent a message to Trump on a website devoted to a pardon for Assange, who is also an Australian. Christensen wrote, "The same people who are trying to take the election from you are the ones trying to prosecute Julian Assange."
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaii Democrat and one-time Democratic presidential candidate, tweeted that Trump should pardon Snowden and Assange because they "exposed the deception and criminality of those in the deep state."
What makes any endorsement of the deep state trope by advocates of Assange and Snowden particularly dangerous now is that it comes at the same time that Trump is employing his persecution fantasies to claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him by a pro-Biden deep state.
The danger of enabling Trump's deep state rhetoric was highlighted by a frightening story on Saturday, when the New York Times reported that Trump met on Friday with conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell and discussed making her some sort of "special counsel" to investigate baseless claims of voter fraud that Trump believes cost him the election. The same story revealed that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has talked about trying to seize voting machines from around the country to try to prove the fiction that they were rigged against Trump.
As the pro-Trump supporters pushing for pardons for Assange and Snowden remain silent on so many of the other leak cases brought during the Trump administration, they have also said nothing to counter Trump's dangerous and hateful anti-press rhetoric, which has created a toxic climate for reporters working in the United States. Trump's constant attacks on the press have convinced his supporters -- as well as local, conservative politicians and law enforcement officials -- to intensify their rhetorical, legal, and physical attacks on journalists around the nation.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, managed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, shows that there have been 120 cases of a journalist arrested or detained on the job in the United States in 2020. The tracker found that during one week at the height of the racial justice protests in late May and early June, "more reporters were arrested in the U.S. than in the previous three years combined." The tracker also found that more than a third of those journalists arrested were also beaten, hit with rubber bullets, or chemical agents.
The bottom line: Advocates of press freedom must remain disciplined as they campaign for the pardons for whistleblowers and make their arguments on the merits of press freedom. They must be careful not to indulge Trump's conspiracy theories while they lobby for the pardons.
Accepting Trump's insane conspiracy theories in order to get him to do the right thing has been the downfall of many prominent figures during Trump's presidency. Enabling Trump's worst instincts never works and only shreds the reputations of those who have sought to appease him.
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