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Showing Original Post only (View all)Wow - TPM. "Priebus: Trump Considering Amending or Abolishing 1st Amendment" [View all]
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/priebus-trump-considering-amending-or-abolishing-1st-amendmentBy JOSH MARSHALL Published APRIL 30, 2017 3:41 PM
A number of press reports have picked up this exchange this morning between ABCs Jonathan Karl and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. But people have missed the real significance. Priebus doesnt discuss changing press laws or libel laws. He specifically says that the White House has considered and continues to consider amending or even abolishing the 1st Amendment because of critical press coverage of President Trump.
Sound hyperbolic? Look at the actual exchange (emphasis added)
KARL: I want to ask you about two things the President has said on related issues. First of all, there was what he said about opening up the libel laws. Tweeting the failing New York Times has disgraced the media world. Gotten me wrong for two solid years. Change the libel laws? That would require, as I understand it, a constitutional amendment. Is he really going to pursue that? Is that something he wants to pursue?
PRIEBUS: I think its something that weve looked at. How that gets executed or whether that goes anywhere is a different story. But when you have articles out there that have no basis or fact and were sitting here on 24/7 cable companies writing stories about constant contacts with Russia and all these other matters
KARL: So you think the President should be able to sue the New York Times for stories he doesnt like?
PRIEBUS: Heres what I think. I think that newspapers and news agencies need to be more responsible with how they report the news. I am so tired.
KARL: I dont think anybody would disagree with that. Its about whether or not the President should have a right to sue them.
PRIEBUS: And I already answered the question. I said this is something that is being looked at. But its something that as far as how it gets executed, where we go with it, thats another issue.
Karl says, accurately, that that kind of clampdown on 1st Amendment rights would require amending the Constitution. Is that what Priebus means, Karl asks? Yes, it is, says Priebus.
Now one might respond to this saying, Okay, technically thats what he said. But he probably doesnt actually mean it.
To which I think the answer is, sure maybe he doesnt mean but why would anyone assume that? He said it and repeated it. The changes President Trump wants are blocked by decades of decades of jurisprudence which is little contested, unlike other hot button points of constitutional law. If you want what Trump wants, you have to amend the constitution and not the constitution in general but the 1st Amendment specifically. Amending the 1st Amendment to allow the head of state to sue people who say things he doesnt like amounts to abolishing it.
None of these are tenuous connections. Each link in the chain of reasoning follows logically from the other.
This, needless to say, should set off everyones alarm bells. If this isnt really what Priebus meant, he should be given the chance to categorically disavow it. The plain meaning of the words, on the record, is that abridging or abolishing the 1st Amendment is something the Trump White House is currently considering.
Big deal.
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Wow - TPM. "Priebus: Trump Considering Amending or Abolishing 1st Amendment" [View all]
NRaleighLiberal
Apr 2017
OP
This is an editorial by Josh Marshall - since I don't watch TV and trust TPM
NRaleighLiberal
Apr 2017
#4
The reporter says: "That would require, as I understand it, a Constitutional amendment"
oberliner
Apr 2017
#57
Neither the interviewer nor RP understand the Constitution or libel laws very well
oberliner
Apr 2017
#58
This would go both ways. Breitbart and FOX News would be put out of business in a New York minute.
TheBlackAdder
May 2017
#68
That's where I remember it from, it came so close to being ratified (35 of the 38 required states)
George II
Apr 2017
#24
So trump is thinking of trying to get part of the Bill of Rights repealed? Yet he rails about...
George II
Apr 2017
#10
Trump can not pass Trumpcare or funding for the wall but wants to amend First Amendment
Gothmog
Apr 2017
#14
Back to my original point -- The president has almost no role in amending the constitution
onenote
Apr 2017
#64
To all those people I worked with: now do you believe me when I called them 'fascists'?
sinkingfeeling
Apr 2017
#31
45's tweet is a question. Unless 45 actually tweets his intent to amend the 1st Amendment,
ancianita
Apr 2017
#36
That's the thing: it's just talk, and so unlikely it's not worth TPM worrying us about it.
ancianita
Apr 2017
#63
One should have to pass a civics test before running for public office
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
Apr 2017
#42