Donald Trump, who loves free speech when the speeches are his own, wants to crush dissent again, if you can believe it. “I don’t know why they don’t take care of a situation like that,” Trump said during a Tuesday interview with the Daily Caller about the protesters who interrupted Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearing. “I think it’s embarrassing for the country to allow protesters. You don’t even know what side the protesters are on.”
“In the old days, we used to throw them out,” he continued. “Today, I guess they just keep screaming.”
Now let us jump into a time machine: It is 2017, neo-Nazis and white nationalists have just marched on Charlottesville, and one of them drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer. In response, Trump said that “some very fine people” were out protesting for a very reasonable cause:
Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking-down of a statue, Robert E. Lee. You take a look at some of the groups and you see, and you know it if you were honest reporters which in many cases you’re not, many of those people were there to protest the taking-down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.
Here’s a handy flowchart of when the president thinks protests should be allowed: Are there Nazis present? >>> Yes. Everything else? >> No.
Glad that’s resolved.