Trump can revoke sanctions on Russian media in the coming days, says a journalist

United States President Donald Trump can revoke the sanctions imposed on RT (Russia Today) over a period of up to two weeks, as investigative journalist Ben Swann said during a panel promoted by the station on Tuesday, as reported by RT.

Swann, who was responsible for RT operations in the US and also performed as an editor at Fox News, qualified sanctions as “illegal” and said they contradict the fundamental principles of US democracy.

“In about two weeks, there will be an initiative to remove these sanctions… I believe Trump disagrees with these measures. He considers them foolish in the way they were imposed. And in fact, they are. Not just foolish but illegal. They violate the Constitution, ”said Swann.

The journalist pointed out that the United States has always defended freedom of the press, emphasizing the importance of the first amendment of the country’s constitution, which guarantees the right to freedom of expression and the existence of a free press.

“The first right in our declaration of rights is freedom of expression without government interference and the right to a free press. And that does not only mean professional press, but the right to publish ideas that may contradict what the government believes, ”he explained.

RT’s conservative political commentator, Scotty Nell, reinforced Swann’s view, accusing President Joe Biden’s government of intentionally contributing to the closure of the channel before the 2020 elections.

“At RT America headquarters, we had a motto: ‘Trust the viewer’. We believe viewers are smart enough to make their own decisions, to make their own facts checks. Repeatedly, they told us, ‘You are telling us the truth. It was the other vehicles in the mainstream media who lied, ”said Nell.

Sanctions against RT are part of a series of US government actions to restrict the performance of Russian communication vehicles in the country.

In September last year, the Biden Administration imposed sanctions on various Russian media, claiming that they would be trying to interfere with US elections and undermine the country’s democracy.

Then Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that RT acted as “an informal arm of Russian intelligence,” an accusation that was promptly rejected by the Russian government, which denounced the measure as a form of censorship and criticized Washington’s hypocrisia by suppressing the broadcaster under the pretext of national security.

On Monday, 2, Ben Swann published an open letter to former President Trump, asking him to revoke sanctions against RT and other Russian media outlets.

Swann has classified the action as “unprecedented”, noting that affected journalists, many of whom are US citizens, lost their jobs and also the ability to provide information to a global audience that, according to him, adds more than 800 million people.

So far, Trump has not officially responded to Swann’s appeal, but the theme of press freedom in the United States is still debated, especially in the context of foreign media performance in the country.

Discussions on sanctions on RT and the limitations imposed on journalists’ work continue to generate controversy, both in the United States and internationally, raising questions about the limits of freedom of expression and the role of government in media regulation.