In what may be the most accidentally honest moment of his presidency, Donald Trump just admitted what we’ve been documenting for months: “We’ve suppressed free speech.” »
Yes, that’s literally what he said:
For those who have been following Trump’s systematic attack on the First Amendment – which we’ve covered widely has Technical dirt— this confession is remarkable not for its content, but for its frankness. Here was a president whose supporters claimed he would “bring back free speech,” explicitly acknowledging that his administration had done the opposite.
He said this at the bizarre White House Antifa roundtable, which included a group of serial fabulists and conspiracy theorists feeding the president’s delusional need to justify the use of the military to American citizens who live in states that did not vote enough for him.
If you can’t see the video, the transcription is pretty simple:
We imposed a one-year sentence for inciting riots. We have suppressed freedom of speech because it went to court and the courts said you have freedom of speech, but what happened is when they burn a flag, it agitates and irritates the crowds.
I’ve never seen anything like this from either side. And you end up with riots so we start from that base.
We are not looking at it from the angle of freedom of expression, which has always been close to my heart, but which has never been brought before the courts. That’s what they’re doing, which is they’re inciting… when you burn an American flag, you’re inciting enormous violence. We have many examples of this. Many, many examples. And it’s actually recorded on tape and you see things happening that don’t happen unless it’s the flag burning.
Well, thanks for admitting what we all know to be true.
Sure, it’s a bit of typical Trumpian word salad, but we can parse what he’s trying to say in a way that likely reveals what the circle of losers around him have been telling him in order to justify their deeply censorious and deeply authoritarian desires.
Last August, he signed an executive order, which has no legal basis, saying federal prosecutors should to try find a way to prosecute the people who burned the flag as an incitement to imminent violence. Indeed, there is a widely recognized exception to the First Amendment which is “incitement to imminent lawless action.”
The theory, such as it is, is this: While flag burning is normally protected speech, Trump officials believe they can circumvent that protection by arguing that flag burning constitutes incitement to imminent lawless action.
Normally, “incitement” is very, very limited to situations where someone points to someone else and tells people “go kill this person” or something like that. It must be clear, directed and imply “imminent illegal action”, that is, immediately after the words have been spoken.
Burning a flag is not that. And, for all his talk about “never passed in the courts,” this has been tested in the courts and the courts have been pretty clear: burning a flag is almost always expression protected by the First Amendment. The key case here is Texas v. Johnson:
We are tempted to say, in fact, that the place the flag rightly occupies in our community will be strengthened, not weakened, by our retention today. Our decision is a reaffirmation of the principles of freedom and inclusion that the flag best reflects, and of the belief that our tolerance of criticism such as Johnson’s is a sign and source of our strength. Indeed, one of our flag’s proudest images, the one immortalized in our own national anthem, is that of the bombing it survived at Fort McHenry. It is the nation’s resilience, not its rigidity, that Texas sees reflected in the flag – and it is that resilience that we reaffirm today.
The way to preserve the flag’s special role is not to punish those who think differently on these issues. It’s about persuading them that they are wrong.
When Trump asserts that this “has never been adopted by the courts,” he is not only wrong: he demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how Supreme Court precedent works. Texas v. Johnson did not fail to “go through” the courts; it established that burning a flag is constitutionally protected speech.
As for the “one-year penalty,” that is not in the executive order, nor is it something a president could determine by executive order. But no one dares tell the Mad King that he has no idea what he’s talking about.
More telling than Trump’s legal confusion is his claim to possess a lot of evidence that doesn’t exist. He insists they have “many, many examples” of flag burning inciting violence that they have “recorded on tape.” This should be easy to verify – if such a tape existed.
If reporters wanted to get it right, they could ask him any number of questions, starting with why he’s ignoring Texas v. Johnson. Or, perhaps, since he claimed they had “many, many examples” of flag burning inciting violence, that they had “recorded tapes,” someone should ask him to provide the recordings. Where is the proof? He says they have so much, so surely they can show it off?
The Brandenburg standard for incitement requires speech “aimed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action and likely to incite or produce such action.” Flag burning, as symbolic political discourse, simply does not meet this criterion. Not even close. There should be specific, directed calls for violence, not mere symbolic expression that some find offensive.
But we all know these are the usual absurd ramblings of an old man who has no idea what’s really going on and is easily deceived by false things they broadcast Fox News.
The only honest, accurate thing he said in the whole affair was the line every Democrat should use in their political ads:
“We have suppressed freedom of speech.”
Yes, Donald, for sure. And you continue to do it. Talk about it every day. Make the quote famous. Make sure everyone knows what Donald Trump is admitting.
This admission fits perfectly into Trump’s broader strategy of attacking the First Amendment. From threatens to sue publishers has promising to imprison protestersthis administration has always treated free speech as an obstacle to overcome rather than a principle to protect.
And anyone who supported him in the false belief that he would “bring back free speech” might want to do some soul searching to understand why you bought an obvious lie from an obvious fabulist.
Trump admits: ‘We have suppressed free speech’
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