A European regulator who lives under our protection tries to limit our political debates. Thierry Breton is a wealthy French bureaucrat who has lived his entire life under the American defense umbrella. Naturally instead of thanking us he’s trying to appoint himself as the arbiter of our political debates. Tim Higgins reports for the Journal: The mere suggestion that Europe thinks it can limit what is said during a U.S. presidential campaign event is an extreme escalation of the continent’s efforts to rein in Big Tech. On Monday, Thierry Breton, the European Union commissioner for the internal market, issued an unprecedented warning to Elon Musk that Monday’s interview of former President Donald Trump on the X social-media platform could run afoul of the EU’s new sweeping online laws aimed at limiting harmful content… In Monday’s letter, Breton wrote about the planned live event to take place on X between Musk and Trump. He noted Musk’s duty to the bloc’s law as a large online platform to balance “freedom of expression” with the “amplification of harmful content” that could “generate detrimental effects on civic discourse and public security.” Mr. Breton has exquisite timing for his attempted intervention, given that this year marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when Americans began liberating his country from Nazism, and the 75th anniversary of the creation of NATO, when Americans agreed to prevent France and other European countries from being conquered by Soviet communism. Perhaps Mr. Breton could consult the history of the two great totalitarian terrors and the detrimental effects they had on civic discourse and public security. He might ponder why they too sought to limit freedom of expression. Here in the U.S. if we had a normal government these days, Mr. Breton’s outrageous attempt to muzzle American speech would receive an immediate and angry condemnation from the White House. Unfortunately the disgraceful Frenchman probably figures he can get away with it given that the Biden-Harris administration has pressured social media companies to enforce official opinions and used the Justice Department to attack its chief political opponent. Tragically, our essential First Amendment liberties do not even seem to carry unanimous support among members of the White House press corps, judging from a reporter’s question at Monday’s press briefing with Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Here’s an excerpt from the official transcript: Q Elon Musk is slated to interview Donald Trump… tonight on — on X. I don’t know if the president is going to tune in. Feel free to say if he is or not. (Laughter.) But I — I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue. It’s a — you know, it’s an America issue. What role does the White House or the president have in sort of stopping that or stopping the spread of that or sort of inter- — intervening in that? Some of that was about campaign misinformation, but, you know, it’s a wider thing, right? MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Yeah, no, and you’ve heard us talk about this many times from here, about the responsibilities that social media platforms have when it comes to misinformation, disinformation. Don’t have anything to read out from here about specific ways that we’re working on it. But we believe that — that they have the responsibility. These are private companies, so we — we’re also mindful of that too. But, look, it is — I think it — it is incredibly important to — to call that out, as you are — you’re doing. I just don’t have any specifics on — on what we have been doing internally. In the absence of a courageous, principled and coherent president, at least America has Elon Musk. The X proprietor responded to Monsieur Breton with an image of a movie character instructing someone to perform a vulgar act upon himself and wrote: To be honest, I really wanted to respond with this Tropic Thunder meme, but I would NEVER do something so rude & irresponsible! It’s hard to think of any comment as rude and irresponsible as Mr. Breton’s. If he still has his job at the end of the week Americans will know that there is no negotiating with the European Commission. Its efforts to stifle technology and free expression must be countered at every turn. More From The Wall Street Journal (subscription required):