President Trump Attacks Right to Protest – Again
President Donald Trump on this day attacked the right to protest, the First Amendment right that is the cornerstone of American democracy.
In an Oval Office interview with a conservative journalist Trump asked rhetorically “I don’t know why they don’t take care of a situation like that.” The “situation” involved the loud protests on Capitol Hill against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh for a seat on the Supreme Court. More than 70 people were arrested on the first day of the hearings on September 4th. Trump did not explain what he meant by “take care of,” but he did add that “In the old days, we used to throw them out.”
Despite the lack of a detailed explanation about what he thought should be done with protesters, a number of Trump’s previous statements clearly indicated a deep hostility to both free speech, protests, and freedom of the press. In response to NFL football players who protested racial injustice, Trump had stated that team owners should “fire” any player who knelt down when the National Anthem was being played. On more than one occasion during the 2016 presidential election campaign, Trump seemed to encourage violent actions against protesters in the audience.
Trump’s utter contempt for a boisterous democratic process has been indicated by his strange affinity for dictators around the world, notable Vladimir Putin in Russia and Kim Jong Sun in North Korea. After a summit meeting with Kim earlier in 2018, Trump told Fox News that “He (Kim) speaks, and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”
Read about President Trump’s Lies: Washington Post, Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President’s Falsehoods, Misleading Claims, and Flat-Out Lies (2020)
Read More: Sarah Kenzidor, Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America (2020).
Learn about the 100 Year fight for free speech in America: Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey Stone, The Free Speech Century (2018)