Have Trump’s Lies Wrecked Free Speech?
A debate has broken out over whether the once-sacrosanct constitutional protection of the First Amendment has become a threat to democracy.
Thomas B. Edsall
By Thomas B. Edsall
Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C. on politics, demographics and inequality.
Jan. 6, 2021
The president in Georgia on Monday.
The president in Georgia on Monday.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times
In the closing days of his presidency, Donald Trump has demonstrated that he can make innumerable false claims and assertions that millions of Republican voters will believe and more than 150 Republican members of the House and Senate will embrace.
“The formation of public opinion is out of control because of the way the internet is forming groups and dispersing information freely,” Robert C. Post, a Yale law professor and former dean, said in an interview.
Before the advent of the internet, Post noted,
People were always crazy, but they couldn’t find each other, they couldn’t talk and disperse their craziness. Now we are confronting a new phenomenon and we have to think about how we regulate that in a way which is compatible with people’s freedom to form public opinion.
Trump has brought into sharp relief the vulnerability of democracy in the midst of a communication upheaval more pervasive in its impact, both destructive and beneficial, than the invention of radio and television in the 20th Century.
In making, embracing and disseminating innumerable false statements, Trump has provoked a debate among legal scholars over whether the once-sacrosanct constitutional protection of free speech has itself become a threat to democracy by enabling the widespread and instantaneous transmission of lies in the service of political gain.
In the academic legal community, there are two competing schools of thought concerning how to go about restraining the proliferation of flagrant misstatements of fact in political speech.
Me: I tried to place my salt water cure for Coronavirus with The New York Times, but the paper only prints articles from people with degrees and although they approved my article for publication, it was never printed, because the politically, those in power want the vaccine, because that is where the money is earned in big chunks, not my salt water cure, which anyone can do and is 100% effective and costs nothing and anyone can use it, irrespective of race, color or religion. Proof, over 26 years without a cold or any other illness, but take the vaccine, made in 60 days from idea to vaccine and no long term effects on the human body known, because the aren’t any, but we do know not everyone is OK with it, it has killed before – like Duh!!