On Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a show of selectively exiting the presidential race and throwing his support behind Donald Trump , hailing the former president as a champion of free speech.
Less than a week later, Trump is already promising to crush First Amendment protections if elected in November. On Monday, Trump complained about pushback to a proposal to sentence people to a year in jail for burning the American flag. “I wanna get a law passed [.
..] You burn an American flag, you go to jail for one year.
Gotta do it — you gotta do it,” Trump said. “They say, ‘Sir, that’s unconstitutional.’ We’ll make it constitutional.
” Donald Trump proposes making burning an American flag punishable by 1-year in prison. In 1989, the Supreme Court upheld the right for protesters to burn flags after Gregory Lee Johnson did so at the RNC in Dallas. pic.
twitter.com/qi87KUCWis People may tell Trump that jailing anyone who burns the flag is unconstitutional because burning the flag is protected by the First Amendment. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v.
Johnson that while the desecration of the flag may be objectionable, “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” RFK Jr. has long claimed that the government is censoring him in various ways, and on Friday blamed his failed attempt at a viable run.