Donald Trump, his surrogates and sycophants have been on TV and radio since last night talking about how the thousands of evil leftists “shut down the First Amendment rights” of his supporters.
No.
No, they didn’t.
The Donald’s assertion is not just wrong, it is absolutely wrong, baseless, false, absurd, and any other word you can think of to mean it is the complete, 180-degree opposite of anything that is even remotely true.
This is not a debatable issue.
For a party that claims to revere the Constitution to the point where it justifies opposing legislative action to prevent the mass slaughter of children, the Republicans sure don’t seem to be very well acquainted with that venerable document.
The First Amendment states:
Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . .; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble
Got that, Donald? The First Amendment says nothing more than that Congress can’t pass a law telling you to shut up, or telling your admirers that they don’t get to listen to your egocentric, stream-of-consciouness rantings. The 14th Amendment extended that prohibition from Congress to state governments.
What the 1st Amendment does NOT do, Donald, is require the rest of us — the ones who haven’t fallen for your simplistic, racist, insulting, jingoistic, xenophobic, ignorant word salad — to sit idly by while you use classic snake-oil demagoguery to whip up your gullible supporters into a frenzy of hate and thuggery that hasn’t been seen in this country for generations.
The First Amendment does not prevent individual Americans from doing what our government is forbidden from doing, Donald. Nothing in the First Amendment, or any other part of the Constitution, gives you an unfettered right to say horrible things and to bring our country down into the gutter with you, without suffering any consequences from angry Americans.
We, the People, as a collection of individuals, most certainly can shut you down, and the First Amendment does not protect you from that.
While I was delighted to see strong protests outside of your rally venue, I don’t personally think protesters should go so far as to prevent anyone from speaking. Just like I don’t think the media should be giving you thousands of hours of free advertising while other candidates get just scraps. But that’s the great thing about America — we get to disagree.
And the bottom line is, neither the protesters who overwhelmed your rally, nor the lamestream media who seem to exist for the sole purpose of fawning over you, are shutting down anybody’s First Amendment rights.