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Trump’s War on the First Amendment Has Drawn First Blood

If we lose Freedom of Speech and Press, what else does America have?

Björn Jóhann
5 min readJun 5, 2020
Photo by Darren Halstead on Unsplash

Donald Trump is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States of America. And he is ordering his soldiers into battle.

His soldiers are his supporters who create and discriminate fake news to discredit anyone who opposes him. His soldiers are the acolytes who tell the American people not to believe his opposition. His soldiers are the police officers who suppress journalists’ rights to report on current events.

Trump’s soldiers are at war against the First Amendment.

In 2016, Trump Drew the Battle Lines.

Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump was steadfast in his version of the truth. A version of the truth that turned out to just be false.

Lying is not a violation of an infringement of the First Amendment. But after Trump won the 2016 election, he gained an immense power: the bully pulpit, power of the presidential platform. Before taking office, he began to abuse it.

In December 2016, he tweeted for the first time about the existence of “fake news”. But he wasn’t talking about election interference or automatically generated articles that…

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Björn Jóhann
Björn Jóhann

Written by Björn Jóhann

A queer, herbivorous, leftist Viking. I write about society, justice, and popular media. UChicago grad.

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