Ever since Donald Trump launched a wide-ranging assault on free speech and the First Amendment last week, the Internet and airwaves have lit up with charges that one or another side are being hypocrites. Trump loyalists point to Democratic officials’ and high-profile liberals’ earlier support for restricting speech in various arenas, while those same left-leaning figures dig up tweets and other statements by the Trump crew condemning censorship and lauding the principle of free speech.

The thing is, they’re both right. Many of the establishment liberals who are now rightly up in arms at Trumpworld’s crackdown on dissent — whose ranks include censored late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who once mocked Trump and his allies after they were banned from social media platforms  — really do have little leg to stand on to criticize Trump’s actions, because they were calling for a lot of the same measures the president is now taking. And the Trump loyalist conservatives who have now flipped on their supposed free speech principles because it’s their team in power really are shameless hypocrites mentally contorting themselves to explain away their lack of principles.

Unfortunately, both sides here are hypocrites who treat free speech like a bad new pet owner during the pandemic: happy to adopt it when it suits them, and quick to abandon it once it stops being personally convenient. Isn’t there anyone in political life who actually defends freedom of speech no matter who’s president or which party’s in power?