President Trump expressed some thoughts about speech rights Thursday:
President Donald Trump had a lot to say at the White House Social Media Summit on Thursday, including offering his take on what does and does not constitute free speech....
He talked about how Silicon Valley is admired for their technology and how smart they are, but that they aren’t “using that brilliance” fairly. “They have to do that.”
“And we don’t want to stifle anything, we certainly don’t want to stifle free speech. But that’s no longer free speech,” said Trump. “See I don’t think that the mainstream media is free speech either, because it’s so crooked, it’s so dishonest.”
“So to me, free speech is not when you see something good and then you purposely write bad, to me that’s very dangerous speech, and you become angry at it,” said Trump. “But that’s not free speech.”
Many observers, understandably, find this tyrannical -- a Jonathan Chait post on the summit is titled "President Trump Says Only Trump Supporters Deserve Free Speech."
But why does Trump believe that only Trump supporters deserve free speech? The answer is that his supporters see the truth: that every aspect of the Trump presidency is "something good." Trump's critics, you see, aren't offering honest critiques of the president and his administration. They know Trump is a great president, possibly the best ever. Whenever they examine what the Trump White House is doing, they "see something good," but then they "purposely write bad." Simply put, there is nothing bad in the Trump White House. Trump, like the Catholic pope, is inerrant. His critics know that, but they "purposely" tell their readers and viewers otherwise.
In his remarks at the summit, Trump did acknowledge that he's susceptible to one category of error:
I call Twitter a typewriter. That’s what I really call Twitter, because it goes onto Facebook automatically. And it goes onto Instagram, and it goes on to television—more so Fox than it does CNN. If it’s something bad, they’ll put it on.
If I have a spelling deal, they will put it on. “Donald Trump spelled the word ‘the’ wrong.” You know? “He doesn’t know how to spell ‘the.’ He spelled it t-h-i.” You know? I couldn’t care... Any kind of a punctuation mistake, they put it on. So I’m very very careful. I, really... I’m actually a good speller, but every once and... The fingers aren’t as good as the brain.
The otherwise infallible Trump, who believes the all media sources should acknowledge the ongoing goodness of his presidency, admits here, shockingly, that he sometimes misspells a word on Twitter.
But he really does know how to spell all the words he misspells, so it's still unfair. Therefore, it ought to be banned.
Published with permission from No More Mr. Nice Blog
