They love to talk about their 1A rights, but never in light of the obligation of delivering real truth to the voting public.

The entire point of First Amendment protections was to give latitude to tell the public about facts those in power would rather they not know. It was never intended as a blank check to be slander merchants weaponized against the party they don’t support.

WaPo and NYTimes never returned the Pulitzers they got for propping up the discredited Russiagate hit pieces. (See also: Walter Duranty) Hillary STILL seems to think that Russia ‘stole’ her election ‘win’. Biden, whose family was taking money from all kinds of sketchy foreign powers in exchange for various political favours, went so far as to call Trump ‘Putin’s puppy’, while claiming Hunter’s (very real) laptop was actually some kind of a Russian disinformation op.

Should it really surprise anyone that the media is STILL looking for ways to use Russia as a cudgel with which to beat Trump?

Conspiracy theorists came out to play when Rubio flew out to Russia. They screamed ‘corruption’ when he pumped the brakes on instituting another round of new sanctions against Russia (the existing ones continued untouched, by the way). They assumed he was up to something nefarious. Or ‘cucked’ by Putin. Maybe both. (And something-something Kash Patel, too!)

Nope.

Trump was busy negotiating the release of an elderly American that Biden had left to rot in a Russian cell, even as Biden traded an important international arms dealer in exchange for a basketball player who (if you take the allegations against her at face value) lacked the good sense NOT to bring her dope vape across an international border.

Stephen James Hubbard was a retired English teacher who made the mistake of trying to retire in Ukraine. When he was 70 years old, and walking with a cane, Russians took the region he was living in, arrested him, and accused him of working for Zelenskyy as a ‘mercenary’. Now, at 74yo, he is returning home.

Here is Trump holding CNN’s feet to the fire for misreporting that issue, directly addressing the completely unfounded cynical speculation in which his critics were engaged.

President Trump on Stephen Hubbard: “If you would’ve put those [Russian] sanctions on or whatever you want to call them, you could forget about him. You’d never see him again. He’d be back in jail for 25 years.” https://t.co/3AYgX5TVsM

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) October 21, 2026

But when you realize that these are the same sort of ridiculous presstitutes who brought ‘Fusion’ Ken Delanian onto MSNOW where he tried to claim Kash Patel was in St Petersburg Russia (for some nefarious plot) when it was objectively shown that Patel was in Lynchburg Virginia, none of the trash they tell is at all surprising.

As for Trump delivering on his promises, it looks like the State Department will (once again!) need to update their running tally:

United States nationals are unjustly detained in countries across the globe. This page celebrates the Americans brought home that were held abroad as hostages, wrongful detainees, or under concerning circumstances.

115
Americans brought home since January 20, 2025.

And that’s just in the year and nine months of his second term… so far.