Nick Fuentes, the host of America First, announced he would not be able to attend Tuesday’s planned Big Tech rally in Florida, as he is now on a No Fly List.
Fuentes, the host of the popular internet show, America First, had been planning to attend a press conference on Tuesday in Florida, with a number of other America First conservatives, but announced in a tweet that he was not even able to fly to Florida from his home in Chicago, due to being placed on a No Fly List. At the time of writing, it is unclear exactly why this has happened. Fuentes would be the first mainstream political commentator who has not committed any crimes to be placed on such a list, as far as National File’s investigation could reveal.
I can't get to Florida today because I am on a no-fly list! I will be addressing this with my prepared remarks on the Florida big tech legislation during the scheduoed press conference at 3:30pm EST on https://t.co/2kiQCJzQVr!
— Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes) April 27, 2021
“So I’m on my way to a press conference to discuss how I’ve been banned from nearly all social media and tech services, and then I find out that I can’t even get there because I’ve been put on a no-fly list,” Fuentes said in a tweet. “This is overt political persecution. America is not a free country.” In a further statement, he said that since attending Trump’s rally on January 6th, he has been banned from AirBnB, Facebook, Instagram, DLive, and Coinbase, banned from every payment processor, and had a bank account frozen, with the no-fly list being just the latest in this long list. “I haven’t even done anything wrong!” he added.
Many America First conservatives were shocked but unsurprised with the decision to put Fuentes on a No Fly List. Lauren Witzke, the former Republican Senate candidate for Delaware, who will be speaking at the rally, said in a post on Telegram that the Department of Justice under Joe Biden has been “weaponized against conservatives.” Conservative commentator Lauren Chen noted that “you don’t have to agree with his politics or methods to think there’s a problem when people are increasingly barred from public life for their opinions,” insinuating that Fuentes would not be the last to be placed on the No Fly List.
Following the protests on Capitol Hill on January 6th, of which Fuentes was not an attendee, calls had been made to place everyone who was in the Capitol that day on a No Fly List, including from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Politico reported in March that the Department of Homeland Security was looking into expanding its use of the No Fly List, although it was still unclear how Fuentes could legally qualify for such a restriction.
The planned rally will still go ahead, just without Fuentes at the helm. National File has previously reported on the press conference, to be held by a growing coalition of America First conservatives, led by former Republican congressional candidate Laura Loomer and Fuentes, who are arguing for a strengthening of the proposed Big Tech bills that are currently making their way through the Florida legislature, noting that they are weak in a number of key areas:
Loomer said that the fines proposed for Big Tech companies were “chump change” for the huge corporations, with the $4.6 million fine that Facebook and Google would have received for censoring her during 2019-2020 campaign only amounting to 0.006% and 0.002% of their 2020 revenues respectively. There is also no evidence to suggest that such fines would happen retroactively regardless…
Secondly, Loomer argued, there is no protection for constitutional speech in Florida’s Big Tech bills, and only requires the social media platforms to “apply censorship, deplatforming, and shadow banning standards in a consistent manner” among its users.
“While DeSantis’s proposed legislation does more to combat tech censorship than any previous effort by Republicans, the bill is seriously flawed and will not solve the problem unless it is amended,” Fuentes told National File at the time. “Specifically the bill must be expanded to cover financial deplatforming, censorship of independent journalists, and the restoration of social media accounts that have already been censored,” he added. Fuentes encouraged America First supporters to call the office of DeSantis to “request that he strengthen [the bills] with the amendments proposed by the America First coalition.”