First Amendment Lawyer Dismisses Trumps Claim That Twitter Is Stifling Free Speech: He Doesnt Want Critics to Have a Chance to Respond – Mediaite

Well-known First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams dismissed President Donald Trumps angry assertion that Twitter was completely stifling free speech by adding a misinformation warning label to two of his inaccurate tweets about mail-in voting.

Speaking with SiriusXM host and ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams, the attorney who famously argued the Pentagon Papers case said Trump had no real argument that his First Amendment rights were somehow being violated by the social media platform. As Abrams noted, Trump ability to post whatever he wants has not been affected in any way.

What hes really saying is not that theyre limiting his speech, he can say anything he wants and not even that theyre taking him off [the site], the free speech advocate explained. So, what hes saying, and hes really very clear about it, is not that it violates him by keeping him from speaking. Hes saying he wants to speak in a way where the other side, or critics of his, or people who are saying what hes saying is just false, will not have a chance to respond.

The elder Abrams Floyd is Dans father did question Twitters logic, however, in its selective application of actively fact-checking Trump. Specifically, Abrams called out Twitter for targeting two of Trumps tweets that included false claims but also absurd yet nonetheless factually irrefutable predictions about mail-in voting. Notably, Abrams pointed to Trumps recent Twitter campaign spreading a vicious conspiracy theory about MSNBC host and political foil, Joe Scarborough.

It is sort of an odd choice, Abrams agreed when asked about the social media platforms decision. Some of what the president was saying was sort of a prediction as to the future. And predictions arent facts anyway, right?

That to me is very different where you have a situation where, by a series of accusations, carefully phrased, maybe for legal reasons, buy carefully phrased to be statements of suspicion and calling for investigation, but in a context where there is, literally,literallyno basis at all for an investigation and is obviously an effort to pay back Joe Scarborough and which does real harm to the [Lori Klausutis] family.

That comes a lot closer to Twitters own guidelines about avoiding harassment, Abrams pointed out. That does sound very far down the road, to me at least, of harassing Joe Scarborough at the same time it is inflicting predictable and terrible pain on the family of this dead woman.

Listen to the audio above, via SiriusXM Channel POTUS 124.

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First Amendment Lawyer Dismisses Trumps Claim That Twitter Is Stifling Free Speech: He Doesnt Want Critics to Have a Chance to Respond - Mediaite