Donald Trump: “We Took the Freedom of Speech Away”
Earlier this week, while hosting an “antifa roundtable,” President Donald Trump said something truly remarkable: “We took the freedom of speech away.” That’s right, a sitting U.S. President openly bragged about restricting citizens’ First Amendment rights.
Trump was specifically referring to the practice of flag burning, and it wasn’t the first time he’s spoken out against the practice. Back in August, he issued an executive order that called flag burning “a statement of contempt, hostility, and violence against our Nation” and ordered the Attorney General to “prioritize the enforcement to the fullest extent possible of our Nation’s criminal and civil laws against acts of American Flag desecration that violate applicable, content-neutral laws, while causing harm unrelated to expression, consistent with the First Amendment.”
That’s some clever handwaving to try and get around the fact that burning the American flag — though certainly controversial and offensive — is nevertheless protected speech under the First Amendment. So now Trump and his minions are left with trying to argue that it’s burning the flag that incites civil unrest in cities like Chicago and Portland, and not, say, the reckless behavior of ICE agents.
Trump’s brag is especially ironic given that he made defending freedom of speech such an important part of his campaign. Indeed, on the very first day of his second term, Trump issued an executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” Issued under the guise of undoing the censorship of the Biden administration, Trump’s order states that “government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society” and argues that it’s American policy to “ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.”
Of course, as we all saw with the Jimmy Kimmel kerfuffle, Trump’s approach to free speech is one-sided. He’s fine with defending free speech so long as it’s used to say what he wants to hear. But the moment free speech rubs him the wrong way, bruises his ego, or challenges his power, it suddenly becomes a leftist tool fomenting riots and civil unrest that needs to be taken away as soon as possible.