Authors have the right to free speech
President Donald Trump likes to claim that he is a protector of the Constitution, but there is at least one Amendment he seems to find problematic: the First.
Just as a refresher so we’re all on the same page, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
President Trump has frequently attacked the free press with bogus charges of “fake news” when it reports what would be more accurately characterized as “news the President doesn’t like.” On the free assembly front, he seems inclined to conflate peaceful protesters with law breakers; his clearing of Washington Square of Black Lives Matter protesters so he could have his picture taken with a Bible in front of a church seems like it will go down in presidential infamy.
But he appears to find free speech most vexing.
President Trump or his surrogates attempting to stop the publication of an unflattering book is now a rite of passage so common it has become unremarkable, but I believe we should pay close attention to the actions of a man who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and yet seeks to block the First Amendment right of others.
In 2018, Trump’s lawyers sent ceaseand-desist letters to Henry Holt & Co., publisher of Michael Wolff ’s “Fire and Fury,” the first (or many) accounts of chaos and dysfunction in the Trump White House.
More recently, after slow-walking the standard government review for classified material, Trump sued to stop publication of John Bolton’s “The Room Where It Happened.” A family tell-all from Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, was briefly halted through a temporary restraining order before being given a go-ahead by an appellate judge who ruled that the publisher, Simon and Schuster, could not be bound by a confidentiality agreement Mary Trump had signed with the rest of her family.
Barring something unexpected, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” will make its way into the world on July 14 and we will presumably hear more inside scoop that confirms what we should already know: Donald Trump is uniquely ill-suited for the job of president of the United States.
That President Trump reflexively seeks to silence his detractors exercising their First Amendment rights is not his most egregious dereliction of duty, but it may be his most petulant.
You just want your president to be a little thickerskinned, you know? There was no shortage of people coming after President Barack Obama, and he managed to bear up without firing off a series of frivolous court actions when, for example, Michelle Malkin released “Culture of Corruption:
Obama and His Team of
Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies.”
Of course, all the negative books written about Obama were written by right-wing partisans, rather than ex-members of his administration, so maybe that doesn’t sting quite so badly.
While I’m on the record that these Trump books are not particularly worthy of anyone’s time or money, they must be allowed to be published.
As a reader, I don’t need another chance to rubberneck at the ongoing disaster of his presidency.
Isn’t living through it enough?