Friday, September 23, 2016

The Trump Family and the First Amendment

Amendment I
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.
The Twitter page of Little Donny Junior, famous shooter of elephants and inheritor of wealth and a notorious name, has recently attracted more traffic because of an infamous tweet comparing Syrian refugees to poisoned Skittles. When you get to his page, you're confronted with his pinned tweet from last March, les mots he finds the most bon:
I'm only able to refer to this dark-haired scion of the Trump dynasty (pronounced with a "din" rather than with a "dine" to make it sound classier) as Fuckface Von Clownstick Junior because I have not given away my First Amendment rights by signing the infamous Trump non-disclosure, non-compete, and non-disparagement agreement that all employees and volunteers of the Trump campaign must sign, even those who only make phone calls and never actually meet a Trump. This entire agreement is worth reading, but the key clause is the lifetime gag order contained in paragraph two.
2. No Disparagement. During the term of your service and at all times thereafter you hereby promise and agree not to demean or disparage publicly the Company, Mr. Trump, any Trump Company, any Family Member, or any Family Member Company or any asset any of the foregoing own, or product or service any of the foregoing offer, in each case by or in any of the Restricted Means and Contexts.

Sign this agreement and you'll never be able to tweet a bad word "even if fictionalized" about the scams of Trump "University" or the Trump Steak that gave you Mad Cow Disease, without risking a lawsuit from the aggressive Trump legal team. And (I hate to even type these next eight words) if Donald Trump is elected to the presidency, you will be legally enjoined from demeaning or defaming him; that's not exactly in the spirit of the First Amendment, is it Donny?

Where does he stand on the other aspects of the First? Would it be establishing religion to "guarantee" that "if  I become President we'll be saying Merry Christmas at every store...Every store"?


Could it be considered favoring the establishment of a state religion to talk about "one people, under one God, saluting one flag" when speaking to the conservative Christian Values Voters Summit?

Is it in the spirit of freedom of the press for a presidential candidate to threaten to sue the nation's most serious newspaper for having the temerity to investigate his many shady business practices?
This is not a man who has any real understanding of, or love for, what freedom of the press means:
It's not only the sacrilegious mentions of the Trump name that might lead to crackdowns on press freedom; he even blamed freedom of the press for contributing to terrorism earlier this week.

That leaves the question of his views toward peaceful assembly. He has supporters who are happy to take care of protesters, and he's happy to give them directions from his bully pulpit:



How might he use that pulpit if he were to attain the most powerful podium in the world?


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