Anonymous Administration Officials Attack FTC and DOJ Leadership Fighting DEI and Censorship…

Confused or dishonest “populists” are attacking Trump antitrust officials for focusing on censorship and DEI rather than mundane economic issues. In doing so, they forget why the MAGA movement turned on Big Tech in the first place.

America First Conservatives reject laissez-faire tech regulation because of Silicon Valley’s jihad against free speech, where dissidents were censored just for going against woke dogmas and being deemed “bigoted” by liberal apparatchiks.

Fortunately, many parts of the tech industry appear to be turning a new corner. With X leading the way, free speech is now making a comeback on tech platforms. The Trump administration isn’t giving up on scrutiny of these issues. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson has continued to press Meta and other tech giants to ensure they protect free speech and refrain from reverting to their censorious ways.

But his focus is coming under attack from anonymous sources in the administration. Instead of fighting for what ordinary conservatives care about, they think Ferguson should fixate on wonky antitrust matters. This malicious gossip reveals how dubious elements want to redefine MAGA and scuttle its cultural nationalist agenda.

The neocon-ish Free Press recently ran an article citing anonymous FTC and DOJ officials complaining about the Trump admin’s antitrust policies. These sources think the administration needs to prioritize their version of populist economics rather than fight DEI and censorship.

“When you look at how Trump campaigned, it was broadly populist-right from an economic perspective,” said a senior Trump administration official. “What we’ve gotten instead at the FTC is that it is not enforcing antitrust laws to help the average person and protect them from the predation of large corporations.”

This official, and other sources, pointed to inquiries Ferguson has launched into gender-affirming care for minors and tech censorship and DEI policies.

Launching inquiries into irreversible sex change operations for kids, tech censorship, and DEI sounds exactly like what MAGA voted for. It’s hard to see how all of this would be a mark against Ferguson.

Ferguson’s handling of the recent Omnicom-Interpublic merger illustrates his Trumpian focus. He approved the merger to take place, but only under the condition that advertising companies should be prohibited from discriminating against media companies based on political viewpoints or spurious notions about “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “bias,” or similar terms.

This prioritization of “culture war” issues shows he’s doing a good job and staying focused on an America First agenda.

However, some on the Right think Trumpism is just left-wing economics. They think that the president’s campaign was all devoted to antitrust matters, “industrial policy,” and strengthening labor unions. Anyone who paid attention to Trump’s campaign knows that’s delusional. The 47th president crisscrossed the country espousing the culture war being waged by Ferguson and other members of his administration. He railed against illegal immigration, MS-13, anti-white racism in schools, tech companies censoring speech, woke culture, and other cultural matters.

Trump did not campaign as a “Khan-servative”—the term for Republicans who liked Biden’s far-left antitrust crusader at the FTC. The anonymous official who claimed Trump did must’ve imagined it. When Trump warned of Haitian migrants eating dogs and cats, the president was not concerned with how mergers supposedly create “food deserts” in urban areas.

Polling shows Trump voters were highly motivated by cultural issues, such as immigration and hostility to woke. Shockingly, antitrust concerns didn’t figure as one of MAGA’s chief concerns.

MAGA wants corporate America to stop censoring conservatives and to offer high-quality products. So long as companies do this, the Trump movement is satisfied and isn’t motivated to wield antitrust as a sword against corporate malefactors.

The push for antitrust measures against Big Tech began as a threat to pressure these companies to do what conservatives wanted. If they practiced censorship, conservatives promised to make them pay a heavy price. However, now that these companies are improving, it makes less sense to focus on this aspect. This does not mean that Meta, Apple, or Google should be let off the hook because they unbanned a few accounts, but the Trump administration is—and should be—focused on how its policies discourage censorship and wokeness rather than left-wing antitrust theories.

The average MAGA voter cares about YouTube banning Donald Trump and their favorite influencers and its search engine discriminating against right-leaning news. “Khan-servatives” care more about whether Google’s ad network pays the New York Times more for advertising.

That’s why it’s imperative for Trump officials to focus on what matters to MAGA, not what matters to those who falsely claim to represent the movement.

Many who think Trumpism is more concerned with antitrust wonkery than woke aren’t even that fond of Trump. One of the antitrust officials quoted in the Free Press article is Roger Alford. The fired DOJ lawyer claims that those who focus on censorship and DEI rather than antitrust “undermine the president’s populist antitrust agenda.” In previous comments, he singled out the FTC for focusing on “agendas that are unusual for antitrust. Things like freedom of speech and a view against DEI and wokeness.” Those may be unusual, but that’s literally what MAGA voted for the government to care about.

Alford regularly attacks unquestionable Trump supporters such as Mike Davis as “MAGA in name only” because they oppose the former DOJ official’s policy agenda. Davis has long been a vocal supporter of Trump, even when it was difficult to do so.

Unlike Davis, Alford is “MAGA in name only.” During the 2016 election, he attacked Trump—in China of all places—as a danger to globalist economic policies. His condemnation of Trump was given at an institution with strong links to the CCP. Talk about putting America first. He opposed Trump’s immigration agenda at this time, declaring efforts to make Mexico pay for a border wall “illegal.” Alford is also a Black Lives Matter supporter. In 2021, he gave a talk at Emory University bemoaning George Floyd’s death, demanding extensive police reforms, and comparing BLM’s fight to his own antitrust crusade.

The ex-DOJ lawyer’s hostility towards those standing up for true MAGA stems from a dispute over whether the government should allow HPE and Juniper to merge. The Pentagon and the intelligence community supported this merger as a necessary move to bolster America’s national security. There’s great concern over the growth of the CCP-linked Huawei and how they could dominate the global internet infrastructure.

Alford and his boss at the DOJ Antitrust Division, Gail Slater, were unmoved by the national security concerns and stuck to their own vision of populism in opposing the HPE-Juniper merge—not surprising given Alford’s pro-China sentiments.

Attorney General Pam Bondi overruled her disobedient staffers and made the DOJ accept a compromise agreement. According to media reports, this resulted in Alford losing his job. Hence, his new mission to attack the administration’s genuine MAGA agenda.

It’s important to remember what Trumpism is about. Ever since he came down the escalator a decade ago, Trump has pledged to make America great again by curbing immigration and political correctness.

Anyone who tries to say otherwise isn’t truly MAGA; they’re espousing their own form of liberal economic populism that has little to do with Donald J. Trump’s agenda.

“Anonymous Administration Officials Attack FTC and DOJ Leadership”

track ‘em down and fire ‘em for insubordination and leaking ...

2 posted on 10/06/2025 9:36:34 AM PDT by catnipman ((A Vote For The Lesser Of Two Evils Still Counts As A Vote For Evil))

Reminds me of that “anonymous” official from Trump 45 who apparently kept writing stupid articles in NYT.
Difference is, these new ones would be ferreted out and dealt with.
Trump now has too many super smart tech people in his corner. They've already kicked out some leakers.

This is news???

4 posted on 10/06/2025 10:09:55 AM PDT by MCF (If my home can't be my Castle, then it will be my Alamo)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.