Why I Will Never, Ever Vote for Donald Trump: Donald Trump and the First Amendment

It is not often I have my posts confirmed so quickly by events, but Donald Trump did it on Friday with respect to my post on Thursday that “I Have Too Much Respect for My Country and Myself to Vote for Donald Trump.”  In Fort Worth on Friday, Mr. Trump went after the news media, The New York Times and The Washington Post in particular:

“One of the things I’m going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we’re certainly leading.  I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.  We’re going to open up those libel laws.  So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”

Fortunately, even if he wins, he won’t be able to do that.  The Founders gave us the First Amendment to stop people like him from doing things like that.  See New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.

Back on November 29, 2015, I said that one of the reasons to vote Republican in November of this year was to protect the freedom of political speech.  Democrats, and the Clinton (Bill)/Obama appointees to the Supreme Court, would allow Congress and states to limit political speech, supposedly to make it more equal and fair.¹

In November, I said we needed to elect a Republican in order to preserve (and maybe expand) the five-judge majority that has stopped this kind of thing. Justice Scalia’s passing seemed to emphasize the importance of my post.

But then we have what Donald Trump said Friday.  This makes whatever danger Hillary Clinton/Bernie Sanders pose to our rights to speak about politics under the First Amendment, look like a Sunday School picnic.  Donald Trump wants to shut up those in the news media who say things he doesn’t like (or who don’t like him).

Now I maybe understand why Donald Trump likes Vladimir Putin.  In Russia, journalists who say things President Putin doesn’t like have a tendency to wind up dead.  Donald Trump is not going that far, but his statements Friday make my whole “Vote Republican to Protect the First Amendment” argument irrelevant.
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¹ They would, for example, overrule Citizens United, McCutcheon, the D. C. Circuit opinion in SpeechNow.org v. FEC, and maybe even parts of Buckley v. Valeo.

UPDATE (2/27/16 2:00 PM): At the end of the second paragraph, I included a reference and link to Brandenburg v. Ohio.  That was a mistake.  I meant New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.  I have corrected it.