𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐫𝐚 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐩

A Trump supporter friend recently recounted the appointment of Elon Musk to the board of Twitter following Musk’s investment in that company.  He expressed hope that Donald Trump would now regain his Twitter account access.  He questioned whether speech in America was “really free” or was to be controlled by the “Liberals and Dems.”  While I share his concern for free speech, I can’t say I miss the daily barrage of news media memes reposting Trump’s latest epithets of derision.

a damaged Iranian launch site after an explosion. Trump's message tweeted to Iran, "I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One."

I must admit that I knew that Trump’s Twitter account had been suspended indefinitely but, given that this happened amidst the chaos of January 6th, I hadn’t delved into the specifics.  I was somewhat surprised by the weak explanation from Twitter of the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Their reasoning was not that Trump had said something that specifically violated their rules but that his words were being interpreted by others in a specific way.  I then read the two tweets, issued in the days after January 6th, that pushed things over the limit.  In isolation, they were innocuous.  

[I won't post the original content for fear that I could land in Facebook Jail.]

They were, however, considering concurrent events, certainly incendiary.  This pointed out just how thin that tightrope of Free Speech must be.  This reminds me of the classic explanation where speech is not free, specifically, yelling FIRE in a crowded theatre where there was no fire.  In that example it was not the specific word that was the problem, it was the reaction that word would have on others that would unnecessarily put them at risk.

The word “fire” is not, in isolation, a bad word but in certain situations, it could cause injury or death.  In Trump’s case, what he said in his tweets was benign, but given the power of his office, the incendiary environment, and his specific target audience, it was viewed as a call to arms or violence.  In the wink, wink, nudge, nudge times of the QAnon era, free speech may have met its’ final hurdle or met its’ match.

We have always had some limits on free speech but are loathe to enforce those limits except in extraordinary times.  January 6, 2021, had to qualify as one of those times.  When I step on my social media soapbox, I reach maybe a few dozen people, the POTUS reaches millions.  My audience is somewhat restricted to folks I know or know of.  Most are rational folks, the rest of you know who you are.

With QAnon now in congress and in bed with a Justice of the Supreme Court, not to mention the Q t-shirt and red hat crowd of Neanderthals that have crawled out from under their rocks in the last decade, we have a new environment and test of our limits to free speech.  Drawing the line between tolerated and not-tolerated speech is a dangerous task.  It is always highly subjective.

In the case of one Donald J. Trump, this subject is somewhat ironic.  For a man who heaps praise on Vladimir Putin and Russia’s machismo form of government, he forgets that there is no free speech allowed in Russia.  “Free Speech” is only for those who have the reins of the government at that particular moment.  By January 8th when Trump’s Twitter account was suspended, to use a western movie analogy, Trump not only didn’t hold the reins of government, but he had also fallen beneath the wagon, had one hand on the rear axle, and was about to be deposited in the ruts of the dirt road below.

From Wikipedia:  “Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also an exception to free speech.”

I call special attention to the two items listed as, “speech integral to illegal conduct, and speech that incites imminent lawless action.”  I feel it was a real stretch by the “rules enforcement” department of Twitter to deem those two last tweets by DJT to fall within that definition.  But, when you take into account the previous 4+ years of tweets, his widely known public pronouncements of proven falsity (last Washington Post count total was 30,573), his position as the former POTUS, and the events he had already inspired on January 6th, I find fault with Twitter only in the “too little too late” category.

For those of you wondering what the included photo has to do with any of this topic, I will explain.  It was a classified intelligence photo that Trump tweeted from a highly classified U.S. reconnaissance satellite known as USA 224.  It was a "whoops-tweet" that revealed a great deal to our enemies.  For anyone other than the president of the US to have done this would have meant time in Leavenworth.  The photo shows a damaged Iranian launch site after an explosion.  Trump's message tweeted to Iran,  "I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One."  Nobody knows what the purpose of such a message was and why we needed to divulge top secrets to our enemies to get that message out.

"𝙎𝙝𝙤𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙛𝙛 𝙞𝙨 𝙖 𝙛𝙤𝙤𝙡'𝙨 𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙖 𝙤𝙛 𝙜𝙡𝙤𝙧𝙮." -- Bruce Lee