President Donald Trump has endorsed a proposed reinstatement of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, that prohibits the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) from targeting Americans with taxpayer-funded propaganda.

The president has signaled his support for a proposal from Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) for the “Charlie Kirk Act” which would reinstate the the Cold War-era prohibition that was repealed in 2013 under former president Barack Obama.

Section 1078 of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act lifted a ban on the use of propaganda against the American people dating back to the late 1940s.

Investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger has reported on how the CIA and other intelligence organizations have historically infiltrated the news media via USAGM, placing stories that advanced U.S State Department policies.

Shellenberger explained how it was common knowledge that stories were planted in the media during the Vietnam war as well as during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

According to Shellenberger, the U.S. government and other governments spent millions of dollars paying for propaganda stories in other countries.

Shellenberger, who covered the Twitter Files release in late 2022, reports that the propaganda operations that the U.S. had run abroad began to be turned inward on the American people in multiple instances.

Senator Lee has argued that, until 2013, it was illegal to “target American citizens with propaganda.”

Lee had previously drafted legislation to restore the Smith-Mundt Act and now will be filing it as the newly renamed Charlie Kirk Act in honor of the slain conservative activist who was assassinated earlier this month at a Utah Valley University campus event in Orem, Utah.

Lee told Fox News, “In 2013, these protections were taken away. My legislation restores this safeguard under the name of an American martyr for freedom of speech and freedom of thought: Charlie Kirk.”

Lee’s legislation would prevent the USAGM, which is an apparatus of the State Department, from using the media it produces from being used to influence the American people.

Lee said, “As Charlie’s vital work so ably demonstrated, Americans can figure out the truth for themselves without government telling them what to believe.”

Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office, Trump noted that legacy media coverage of him has been 97% negative and said that reporting “needs to at least be accurate.”