Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

EDITORIAL:

Trump’s Twitter account is latest test in strength of First Amendment

Sorry, Mr. President, but it looks like you can’t treat your happy place, @realDonaldTrump, like one of your private golf clubs. Seems the Constitution is getting in the way of you barring entry to people you consider riff-raff.

That was the upshot of last week’s ruling on a lawsuit filed by several Twitter users whom Donald Trump had blocked from his infamous account for criticizing him.

It’s hard to imagine how much this must burn Trump, with his all-consuming narcissism and contempt of criticism.

But Trump’s irritation is our democracy’s gain, as the ruling was a victory for the First Amendment.

The ruling said Trump can’t legally block his account because he uses it for official business like making announcements. Therefore, federal judge Naomi Reice Buchwald concluded, it’s a public platform — like a city park or an old-fashioned town square.

“We hold that portions of the @realDonaldTrump account — the ‘interactive space’ where Twitter users may directly engage with the content of the president’s tweets — are properly analyzed under the ‘public forum’ doctrines set forth by the Supreme Court,” Buchwald wrote, “that such space is a designated public forum, and that the blocking of the plaintiffs based on their political speech constitutes viewpoint discrimination that violates the First Amendment.”

That said, Buchwald indicated that Trump didn’t have to listen to critics. She suggested that the president use Twitter’s mute function, which can be used to prevent responses from individual followers from appearing on a user’s feed.

So to go back to the analogy of a private golf course, Buchwald ruled that Trump must allow people on his account to leave comments in the suggestion box, but he’s not legally required to read them.

Trump undoubtedly will keep right on blocking people, given that Buchwald’s ruling wasn’t an order to comply. But if so, the ruling sets the stage for a court order if Trump doesn’t follow the law.

It’s pathetic that any of this is in question. The tweets that offended Trump would have been easily brushed off by a leader who treated the people around him like free-speaking Americans as opposed to royal subjects. Sample: After Trump tweeted that he would have had no chance of winning the presidency if he’d listened to mainstream media, one of his critics replied: “To be fair you didn’t win the WH: Russia won it for you.”

Another blocked user, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, tweeted, “Corrupt Incompetent Authoritarian. And then there are the policies. Resist.”

No profanity, no threatening language, just Americans invoking their First Amendment right to voice an opinion. But to the thin-skinned Trump, such behavior is worthy of banishment if the criticism is aimed at him.

Welcome to another example of Trump’s hypocrisy. Remember, this is a man who once said, “I will be the president for all Americans.” Really? Even those with the audacity to suggest you’re not beyond reproach?

Buchwald’s ruling was far from perfect — a better outcome would have been to order Twitter not to allow Trump to block his account since he’s made it a public space — but it’s a step in the right direction at a time when freedom of expression, government transparency and the First Amendment are facing constant attacks.

The NFL’s ban on quiet protests by players, the extreme right’s relentless assault on the truth and the portrayal of mainstream media as a subversive opposition party are just a few of the factors threatening the foundation of American freedoms.

Two centuries and counting since it was adopted to ensure that Americans could question their leaders and speak out against those who would try to tyrannize our nation, the First Amendment remains as critical as ever.