Maddowblog-'We took the freedom of speech away': On First Amendment, Trump says quiet part out loud

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A week after the White House boasted that Trump “is a strong supporter of free speech,” the president’s legal gibberish pointed in the opposite direction.

Last week, the White House boasted that Trump “is a strong supporter of free speech.”

This week, the Republican declared, "We took the freedom of speech away." www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-10-09T13:05:29.323Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/-took-freedom-speech-away-first-amendment-trump-says-quiet-part-loud-rcna236600

The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that the First Amendment protects those who burn the American flag in protest. Nevertheless, seven weeks ago, Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at prosecuting those who “desecrate” the American flag......

But again, presidents can’t make up laws and criminal sentences based on his whims. As Trump probably ought to know, such edicts might be common in authoritarian nations, but this isn’t how the United States works.

The online missive generated very little coverage, but the president apparently isn’t letting it go. USA Today reported:

‘We took the freedom of speech away, because that’s been through the courts, and the courts said you have freedom of speech but what has happened is when they burn the flag it agitates and irritates crowds,’ Trump said during a roundtable discussion on antifa.

......I won’t pretend to know what, if anything, will come of this. Maybe Trump peddled his legal gibberish to scratch an ideological itch. Maybe his lawyers will quietly tell him behind the scenes that they can’t actually bring any criminal cases along these lines. Maybe the Trump-directed Justice Department will start issuing indictments as part of an effort to test the Supreme Court precedent. Time will tell.

But in the meantime, one week after the White House boasted that Trump “is a strong supporter of free speech,” the president declared — out loud, on the record and in public — that he and his team “took the freedom of speech away,” referring to developments that did not and cannot happen.

Against a backdrop of an aggressive White House campaign against the First Amendment, Trump’s unscripted candor offered a classic example of a politician saying the quiet part loud.

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1. Yes, it's a real quote..