Under Trump, Mike Benz Looks the Other Way on Free Speech and Censorship
The most influential voice in understanding the Left’s Censorship Industrial Complex now appears blind to the censorship being imposed by the Right.
IN Issue Three of Outlook Magazine, I proudly recognized Mike Benz as one of new media’s top ten independent voices. His solitary work—meticulously exposing the inner workings of what is now known as the Censorship Industrial Complex—has been nothing short of remarkable. During the Twitter Files revelations, Benz was a key resource for Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, two of the principal journalists who uncovered former Twitter’s deep ties to government agencies and the censorship apparatus quietly built behind the scenes.
In the introduction to that magazine issue, I wrote the following about the featured journalists:
“By challenging conventions and reclaiming the core values of journalism, these individuals are paving the way for a new era of integrity, truth-telling, and nonpartisanship—ushering the industry back to its foundational ideals.”
At the time, independent media was on the rise, and I firmly believed that the few journalists and investigative reporters willing to place integrity, truth-telling, and nonpartisanship above all else would become this generation’s change-makers. By distinguishing themselves radically from their mainstream counterparts, they had the potential to help usher in the “golden age for investigative journalism” that Matt Taibbi envisioned during his appearance on The Tucker Carlson Show in January—anticipating what a Trump presidency could mean for the future of journalism and the country at large.
In Benz’s feature, I wrote the following:
“Since 2016, Mike Benz has followed in the tradition of courageous Americans who risk a lot to bring high-level government disclosures to light. Unlike most whistleblowers, who typically release troves of documents to independent journalists or mainstream outlets, Benz has taken a methodical, investigative approach. Through careful dissection and play-by-play analysis of internal government records, documents, calls, conferences, and more—all hidden in plain sight—he has been steadily exposing the intricate and sprawling system known as the Censorship Industrial Complex—a behemoth born from the shift toward waging war through information via media rather than military might.”
With the Trump administration now well underway, independent media figures like Benz—once seen as potential stalwarts of journalistic integrity—have, in many cases, morphed into a propagandistic arm of the conservative political establishment. In Benz’s case, this shift is perhaps unsurprising: he served as a White House speechwriter during Trump’s first term and emerged as a leading advocate for the Trump-Musk coalition in the lead-up to the 2024 elections.
In his recent sit-down interview with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Benz made his political biases unmistakably clear. For Benz, access to conservative power brokers appears to take precedence over the pursuit of truth—a reality reflected as much in the questions he posed to Rubio as in the ones he conspicuously avoided.
In the video titled “Dismantling the Censorship Bureaucracy,” Benz fails—more accurately, submissively toes the line—to critically challenge or even acknowledge the glaring hypocrisy of Rubio and the Trump administration’s righteous crusade against attacks on free speech, even as they construct their own censorship apparatus targeting critics of Israel’s brutal assaults on Palestinians.
“The best way to counter disinformation is free speech,” Rubio says in a matter-of-fact tone. “It’s to make sure that what’s true has as equal or greater opportunity to communicate as what’s not true. We’ve learned that the hard way… We have instances now in Western countries where people are being arrested—you’ve seen these, you know what I’m talking about—people out there, they put up a post and a cop comes coming knocking on their door, and you’re going to go to jail for sixty days for posting something online. You know, this is crazy stuff that’s happening.”
If only Rubio listened to himself speak. That he could utter those words without a hint of shame or guilt—despite the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown on free speech among student activists who protest against Israel, and on campuses like Columbia and Harvard—speaks volumes about why he was elevated to Secretary of State. He doesn’t need to believe a word he says publicly; he only needs the MAGA/Republican base to blindly absorb the talking points and walk away convinced that the Trump administration is a steadfast defender of free speech and “America First” policies.
If you think that strategy has no chance of succeeding, think again. Benz—a loyal MAGA constituent and one of the leading voices on issues of digital freedom, civil liberties, and censorship—somehow managed to spend fifteen minutes with the Secretary of State without once posing a single critical question that challenged the administration’s blatant assault on free speech. That wasn’t an oversight—it was part of his role in propping up the establishment’s image as a crusader against censorship, even as it builds its own machinery to suppress dissent.
If ever there were a clearer sign that independent media is being infiltrated by former State Department officials and Intelligence Community agents, this interview would be it.
Yeah, it's really sad that so few of the strong voices against the censorship industrial complex during the Biden years have maintained their integrity now that Trump has arguably done things far worse than Biden ever did. Clint Greenwald is the only one I can think of who has stood firm.
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