You wouldn’t think you’d need a presidential executive order to support free speech on college campus. After all, colleges and universities are places where traditionally one finds a variety of opinions. Plus, the First Amendment guarantees it. But, this is 2019, and liberals still can’t stomach the fact that Donald Trump is the President. And so here we are.

So it was last week when one young conservative, Hayden Williams, manning a table at UC Berkeley on behalf of Turning Point USA, took a haymaker from a livid leftist who didn’t want him on campus. Eventually the perp was arrested.

https://twitter.com/ModerateSeattle/status/1101630684588724226

But despite that nasty dustup, young Hayden attended the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland on Saturday. It was there that he met and shared a stage with none other than President Donald Trump.

And during that time  — and perhaps inspired by Hayden Williams — Trump threw down the gauntlet and announced that he would sign an executive order. This order would ensure that college and universities would support free speech — or else lose their funding:

“Today I’m proud to announce that I will be very soon signing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research grants.”

Needless to say, the crowd went wild.

What’s not to like about support for free speech? It’s in the Constitution, and it’s America at its best and most liberated. Plus suppression of speech is a feature of tyrannical socialist nations. . . oh, wait.

Credit: Jason OX4 @ flickr. CC By-SA 2.0

And, because it’s Trump who supports free speech, the usual suspects oppose it.

Like Sophia Nelson of USA Today, MSNBC, and Daily Beast, who put the words Free Speech in scare quotes:

Trump makes news saying he will sign an EXECUTIVE ORDER to force colleges to enforce "Free Speech" on campuses or they will forgo their federal money. #CPAC19

— Sophia A. Nelson (@IAmSophiaNelson) March 2, 2019

A Bernie supporter, responding to Nelson’s tweet, stated:

“That does not sound like it is constitutional.”

Leave it to a Bernie Bro to not understand that there’s nothing in the Constitution that requires taxpayers to fund colleges and universities.

There’s also this Resistance guy who said if you support free speech you want to “consolidate fascism,” which tells me he knows nothing about fascism:

This is not about “Free Speech.” This is about normalizing fascism on campuses in the service of the Trump/Pence Regime which is shredding legal & political norms, demonizing group after group, moving to crush any opposition, and to consolidate fascism in USA. #CPAC19 https://t.co/hxSSnnW7Rt

— #TrumpPenceMustGo (@RefuseFascism) March 2, 2019

But when will Trump sign this executive order? He gave no specifics, although he’s been concerned about support for free speech on campuses in the past. Two years ago, when provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos lost speaking engagements at various universities due to violence from the Left, Trump tweeted this:

If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view – NO FEDERAL FUNDS?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017

I hope Trump follows through with his ultimatum. I’m a bit skeptical, because despite the administration’s threats to withhold money from sanctuary cities, all but one are still getting their grants. And there’s the executive order for the border wall still hanging in the air, too.

But withholding research money from schools who don’t support free speech would be popular among Trump’s base. Plus, even though professors may rail about how evil Trump is, they sure do like their research bucks. Since they live by the adage “publish or perish,” if they can’t do research, they certainly can’t publish. Money always has a way of making the recalcitrant to come their senses.

Featured image: cropped from Jason Eppink @ flickr. CC by 2.0.