THE SILENCE IS DEAFENING: I believe Trump got much wrong about the First Amendment. As yes, he would often (not without reason) unleash his Master Troll skills on the White House Press corps, who I’ve likened to cats chasing a laser pointer.

That said, for four years we heard a drumbeat from media critics, news organizations and inside-the-bubble DC types about how Trump — and conservatives in general — are a threat to the physical safety of reporters. Remember when heads rolled at The New York Times after they (gasp!) published an Op/Ed written by conservative Senator Tom Cotton that according to Times reporters, “puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger”? Oh yes:

Nikole Hannah-Jones, who recently won a Pulitzer prize for the 1619 Project, which examines the legacy of slavery in America, tweeted: “I’ll probably get in trouble for this, but to not say something would be immoral. As a black woman, as a journalist, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this.”

Both Sulzberger and Bennet first defended the decision to run the column. Bennet wrote in an essay that “debating influential ideas openly, rather than letting them go unchallenged, is far more likely to help society reach the right answers.”

But on Thursday evening, the Times reversed itself and said the column had not met editorial standards.

Allow me to do a “whattabout” here. Allegedly sincere and intelligent adults flipped out over “allowing” their readers to see an opinion that — in only the most concatenated and gymnastic logic — could lead to a reporter being harmed.

Yet, when a genuine — not imaginary — physical assault on a journalist happens, there is no hue and cry, not a word from the Committee to Protect Journalists nor their empty-vessel mouthpiece Christiane Amanpour. Not a peep from Jim Acosta or Margaret Sullivan or Brian Stelter. Of course, the reporter (a woman, no less) identifies as a conservative:

Two men were busted for rubbing a dirty diaper on an independent, conservative reporter’s face and attacking her during a Black Lives Matter rally in Madison Square Park last month, according to authorities and police sources.

The New York Post adds that a video clip shows her being hit with an umbrella, spat on, hit with a skateboard, while the crowd says, ‘Don’t protect [her], she’s for Trump.”

Glad the NYPD caught the assailants, but the hypocrisy of the people who claim to care about protecting reporters is disappointing at best. You can bet your bottom dollar that were she a freelancer for NPR or The Daily Koz (same thing, I know, I know) we’d have heard more outrage.

Seems to me that the silence of journalism’s would-be “defenders” is pretty much saying “She deserved it for being a conservative.”

NEWS I HOPE YOU CAN’T USE: Study: MRI-guided ultrasound treats prostate cancer with few side effects.

OUT ON A LIMB: Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL): Presentation by House managers has not changed my view that the proceeding is unconstitutional — expects acquittal.

RELAX. SLOW JOE SAYS THE CHINESE ARE OUR FRIENDS. Uighurs: ‘Credible case’ China carrying out genocide.

Disney was happy to film Mulan practically within sight of the camps, though. “The final credits thank a government security agency in Xinjiang province, where about 1m people – mostly Muslim Uighurs – are thought to be detained.”

REMINDER: OUR OLIGARCHS SEE CHINA AS A MODEL, NOT A WARNING. Big Tech’s Deadly Threat to Democracy.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): NJ substitute teacher, 41, accused of ‘multiple’ sex romps with her teen boy student. “According to NJ.com, New Jersey substitute teacher Kameelah Kareem, 41, faces multiple counts linked to the alleged sexual relationship. . . . She faces counts of second degree sexual assault and second degree endangering the welfare of a child.”

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Gina Carano Rehired By Disney After She Identifies As An Abusive Male Director.

Related: Baby, no-da: Hollywood canceling conservative actor over social media postings? Update: What about her co-star?

Why, it’s as if: Gina Carano’s Firing Is the Product of Yet More Calvinball.

COLLUSION: RealClearInvestigations: America’s Spy-Busters Put Secret-Stealing Chinese ‘Grad Students’ Under Microscope. “But this isn’t a simple story of a belligerent power’s intellectual larceny and espionage. It’s a more nuanced problem that the United States largely brought upon itself through its longstanding policy of engagement with China aimed at bringing it into the international fold. One result is a Chinese symbiosis with American universities that includes Chinese financial support for American schools and large subsidies from American taxpayers for both sensitive research and the visiting Chinese nationals who conduct it. . . . What happened after those four arrests was even more revealing about the scope of China’s clandestine presence in the United States: An estimated 1,000 Chinese graduate researchers abruptly fled the country and returned to China – apparently, in the view of American officials, because they had concealed their ties to the Chinese military and were afraid of arrest.”

SNOWFALLS ARE A THING OF A THE PAST: Se7°en. “Take a look at the temperature on Monday: 7°F. Not 37, not 27, but 7°F. That wouldn’t be the coldest Austin day on record, but it would be the coldest this century and the coldest since it hit 4°F in 1989.”

WELL, THAT HARSHES THE “CLIMATE CHANGE” NARRATIVE: Climate change: global warming may have started before industrial revolution, Chinese study says. “Studies of coral reefs in the Paracel Islands suggest that the South China Sea started warming up in 1825, at the start of the industrial revolution, according to a study by Chinese scientists. That was the year the world’s first railway began operating in England and most ocean-going ships still used wind power. Man-made carbon dioxide emissions could not fully explain such an early rise in the warming trend.”

EMBATTLED MASSACHUSETTS CLIMATE OFFICIAL DAVID ISMAY RESIGNS ‘IMMEDIATELY:’

David Ismay, the Baker administration $130,000-a-year climate change undersecretary, has resigned “immediately” citing his incendiary comments.

In a resignation letter he shared with the Herald today, Ismay writes: “It is with great regret that I submit my resignation, effectively immediately, from the  position of Undersecretary for Climate Change in the Executive Office of Energy and  Environmental Affairs.”

The resignation letter is addressed to his boss, Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Kathleen Theoharides, and is dated Wednesday, Feb. 10.

Ismay heads out the door after a series of questionable comments about forcing homeowners, motorists and fishermen to prepare for hard times as the state pushes for so-called Net Zero emissions in the years to come.

Even Gov. Charlie Baker bristled at Ismay’s rhetoric, saying the undersecretary does not speak for him.

Ismay laded on the hot seat after MassFiscal posted a video of the undersecretary saying the state needs to “break their will” and “turn the screws on” ordinary people to force changes in their consumption of heating fuels and gasoline. Ismay described the ordinary people as the “person across the street” and the “senior on fixed income.”

That didn’t sit well with the governor.

“First of all, no one who works in our administration should ever say or think anything like that — ever,” Baker said late last week. “Secondly, Secretary Theoharides is going to have a conversation with him about that.”

“Santino, never let anyone outside the family know what you are thinking.”

Related: Howie Carr: Charlie Baker’s blundering climate guy shines light on hypocrisy.

JEFF BEZOS CAN AFFORD A LOT OF MOVING TRUCKS: Jeff Bezos would owe $2B a year under proposed Washington wealth tax.

Washington state lawmakers introduced a bill earlier this year that would impose a 1% levy on “extraordinary” intangible financial assets including cash, stocks, publicly traded options, futures contracts, pension funds and bonds, but not income.

“Asking the state’s poorest residents to pay six times more in taxes, as a share of their income, than the state’s highest income households, including some of the wealthiest individuals in the world, is unconscionable,” the proposal said.

Legislators estimate the tax would raise about $2.5 billion in new revenue.

Easy call: It won’t.

NORMAL STUDENT BEHAVIOR IS NOW “RECKLESS” STUDENT BEHAVIOR. If you’re this worried, you should end sports competitions. You’re not doing that because they make the university money. So no high horses, please.

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE MIGHT HAVE TO BE PERMANENTLY RETIRED: Google, Facebook tell SCOTUS it should be harder for you to sue them. “The argument boils down to ‘if you don’t know we messed up, it can’t hurt you’.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Yale prof accuses conservative journalist of slander, quickly backtracks when called out.

EVERYONE IS A CONSERVATIVE ABOUT WHAT THEY KNOW BEST: Amazon Hired Koch-Backed Anti-Union Consultant to Fight Alabama Warehouse Organizing. “The head of the Center for Independent Employees is paid $3,200 per day to thwart what could become Amazon’s first unionized facility in the U.S.”

DECOUPLING: Calls to close CCP-funded Confucius Institutes grow louder. Here’s what’s fueling them. “The national chairmen of the College Democrats and the College Republicans joined in signing the statement.”

“SHUT UP,” THEY EXPLAINED: Twitter confirms Trump’s ban is permanent, even if he runs again in 2024.

Trump tweeted his way to the White House once, and Jack Dorsey and the rest of the antisocial media mafia are for damned sure not going to let that happen again.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Hollywood Sold Its Soul to China … Now What? “China may no longer need U.S. movies to entertain its populace. The L.A. Times reports Chinese-made films dominated the country’s 2020 box office charts. The highest ranking U.S. film, “Tenet,” came in at number 11… it looks like China won’t be saving as many U.S. blockbusters as it had in the past. An already reeling Hollywood will have to find new ways to balance its ledgers as the theater industry tries to come back from the crippling pandemic.”

Get woke, go broke — and do read the whole thing, in which Christian collected years’ worth of Hollywood kowtowing to the CCP in one convenient column.

SAME: Hong Kong: the dismantling of democracy. The Beijing-backed assault on everyday freedoms is continuing apace.

But then, our ruling class sees China as a model.

BIDEN’S RETURN TO NORMALCY: Unity on civil war: Both sides see US ‘headed for bloodshed’.

THIS WILL BE AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT IN WHETHER YOU CAN HAVE A POLITICAL PARTY COMPOSED ENTIRELY OF “OFFICIALS” AND CONSULTANTS: Exclusive: Dozens of former Republican officials in talks to form anti-Trump third party. I suppose they can count on some money from lefty billionaires to help fill some pockets, anyway.

Also, the notion that the GOP is “divided” is hogwash. Bush finished in 2009 with an approval of 34%, and that was a bounce from a fall low of 25%. Trump finished with 51%, and a 79% approval rating among Republicans.

I NEVER WORRIED ABOUT COMMUNIST TIME TRAVELERS UNTIL TOMORROW: China Swears It Isn’t Building a Time Machine.

BRING ME THE HEAD OF SIGREDO GARCIA: Inmate Says Convicted Dan Markel Hit Man Claims Prosecutor Coerced Him To Lie On The Stand.

WHAT IF WE HAD AN IMPEACHMENT AND NOBODY CAME? Few expect Trump conviction, even fewer to watch Senate trial.