Day 265: Trump Threatens to Shut Down Major News Network

The First Amendment goes by the wayside.

The First Amendment is likely the single most important legal clause in American history. It reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Donald Trump either forgot about it or doesn’t care about it, because after today there is no other explanation.

Trump loves to scream FAKE NEWS at anything he even moderately does not like, even stories that are confirmed to be true by multiple outlets. But today, he took it a step further and called for the examination of a license of a major news network.

Upset about NBC News’ story that Trump wanted to increase the United States’ nuclear arms cache tenfold — it was this meeting that caused Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to later remark that Trump was a [expletive] moron — Trump pushed back on Twitter.

Yup, Trump, unhappy about a story that dozens of people can verify, is floating the idea of challenging NBC’s license.

You know who shuts down the free press for stories they don’t want in the public domain? Kim Jong-un. Vladimir Putin. Raul Castro. Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Even mentioning the possibility is so far gone from normal that it requires a swift rebuke from every elected or appointed member of government or member of the military who raised their right hand and promised to support, preserve, protect, or defend the Constitution of the United States.

Barack Obama never once threatened to shut down a news network, even as he was slandered on a daily basis. George W. Bush, facing a deluge or critical press for years, never called to have the licenses pulled for a single one.

On the other hand, Trump is angry about a report that says he wanted more nuclear weapons. That’s it. That caused him to publicly undercut one of the most critical tenets of the United States and one of the most important legal clauses in American history.

265 days in, 1197 to go

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