Donald Trump, domestic terrorist
According to a tweet from Kaitlan Collins, “President” Donald Trump is now blaming the media for any violence taking place. She tweeted “Trump just spoke to reporters on the South Lawn. According to the print pool, he was asked about creating violence with his rhetoric. ‘You’re creating violence by your question,’ pointing to a reporter. ‘The fake news is creating violence.’”
Trump becomes more unhinged from reality on a daily basis. It’s preposterous and dangerous on its face that a reporter asking him a question about violence can be answered with the claims that the question itself creates the violence. It is at best another effort by this “president” to stifle the First Amendment and its protections of against “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
Trump’s constant use of the term “fake news” is audacious. The greatest liar yesterday stated, “When I can, I tell the truth.” At his press conference yesterday about immigration, his almost every word was “fake news” and seemed aimed at “creating violence,” rallying followers at his rallies, with his every tweet and briefing. His rhetoric is hateful, dividing, inciting and dangerous. In his very answer to the reporter’s question, he is showing that his rhetoric has the potential to create violence.
Trump has called the media “fake news” repeatedly, despite it being he who is invariably fake, and has repeatedly referred to the media as the “enemy of the people.” How Trump believes or can assert that somehow the “fake news” (whoever is included in that term) is creating violence is a disgraceful, but not surprising, utterance, from the Greatest #PrevaricatorOfTruthUnitedStates has ever seen.
When it comes to rhetoric, and creating potential violence, in response to Trump’s sending of troops and in connection with his Columbia, Missouri rally, two attendees suggested in response to use of guns that if the caravan members throw rocks, “I think that you can’t put somebody in harm’s way and then handcuff them, tell them they can’t defend themselves” and also that troops should be able to fire weapons on the caravan without “shooting to kill.”
Like the Fourteenth Amendment, the First Amendment is clear – the power of the press to ask questions and the people to speak is inviolate, notwithstanding Trump’s efforts to quiet the truth.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.