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President Donald Trump talked about hobbling the First Amendment like it’s a good thing on Wednesday.
During the White House’s so-called “antifa roundtable,” the president rambled about how proud he was that his administration is taking “the freedom of speech away” from people who burn the American flag.
Trump seemed to indirectly admit that an executive order he signed back in August runs afoul of decades-old Supreme Court decisions that deemed flag burning a constitutionally protected form of political speech.
Taking a detour away from left-wing “antifa” boogeymen and the threat of domestic terrorism, Trump took time to celebrate a more superficial win, awkwardly claiming that flag burning’s potential to incite violence was a far bigger threat than curtailing the First Amendment.
“We took the freedom of speech away because that’s been through the courts, and the courts said ‘you have freedom of speech’ but what has happened is when you burn a flag, it agitates and irritates crowds — never seen anything like it, on both sides — and you end up with riots.”
“So we’re going on that basis,” Trump continued. “We’re looking at it from, not from the freedom of speech, which I always felt strongly about, but never passed the courts.”
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Trump’s rationale about the public danger of flag burning has already been considered by the Supreme Court, which deemed that the right to free expression outweighs any hypothetical harm.
In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the court affirmed that only speech that promotes “imminent lawless action” is punishable, as if a speaker intentionally rallies a crowd to riot immediately.
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