If people really understood the first amendment, they’d realize that the big #TrumpDump is EXACTLY what the first amendment is for. Source: I can read.

The point of the first amendment, according to all of the reliable sources I have checked, is to stop the government (currently a Republican-majority, though soon not to be) from forcing private citizens and companies to repeat stuff they don’t want to repeat.

People are allowed to air their grievances about Trump, and the Trump government can’t do anything about it. Trump does not have the power to force Twitter, or even Fox News, to repeat his lies.

What is even more interesting and pertinent is that the same laws which Republicans use to track immigrants and imprison illegal aliens are the same laws that make sedition illegal.

The Smith Act, for example, requires non-citizen residents to register with the federal government... it also sets penalties of up to 20 years in jail for anyone even remotely involved in a plot to overthrow the government.

These laws on sedition extend to anyone who “prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty,” of overthrowing the government. Which means Twitter could be liable.

So while a private company is not subject to the first amendment, it IS subject to sedition laws in that it could hypothetically be blamed to “printing” and “distributing” seditious content. Can you blame them for the #TrumpDump??

This same law also deals with deportation of illegal aliens etc so it is a law that Republicans rely on quite a lot. They can’t very well pretend it doesn’t exist.

Going back to the 1st amendment, in 1919 an anti-war activist was convicted for handing out pamphlets encouraging people to ignore the draft. He was considered a “clear and present danger” to US security.

...If anti-draft pamphlets aren’t protected, Trump ain’t either.

In another interesting note, a lot of landmark 1st amendment cases involve people wanting to ban books, and the judge ruling that books should never be banned.

The attitude again and again is that government can’t ban books.

Another big landmark case involved Jehovah’s Witnesses not wanting to pledge allegiance to the flag. The ruling was that they didn’t have to do it. Listen to what the judge had to say:

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion” -Supreme Court, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943.

The 1st amendment is the reason why NFL players were legally allowed to kneel on the field during the anthem. The government had no right to interfere. But it didn’t stop the NFL from firing @Kaepernick7 because the NFL is not government. Thank god.

Various cases have established a strong precedent that the 1st amendment only applies to fact-based, non-violent, non-obscene content which does not interfere with the government’s operations.

It does not give carte Blanche to tweet about hanging the Vice President.

If the first amendment didn’t exist, Trump could issue one of his executive orders demanding that Twitter reinstate his account. Trump could stop CNN outright from broadcasting fact based news.

But he can’t. And that makes him furious.

For the last four years, all Trump has been able to do is splutter “fake news!” When news organizations call out his “alternative facts”. He couldn’t stop them although he wanted to. He called freedom of the press “frankly disgusting” https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/11/politics/donald-trump-media-tweet/index.html

I’m sure all of Trump’s dictator buddies told him about the importance of controlling the media.

He even tweeted about wanting to suspend NBC’s license.

“at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License?”
— Trump, on Twitter, October 11, 2017

Even Trump couldn’t challenge or change the freedom of the press. At no point was John Oliver at risk of being arrested for calling Trump “America’s back mole” or a “sentient circus peanut”.

But many peaceful BLM protests were attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets.

The only credible threats to the first amendment have come directly from republicans, who think it shouldn’t be legal for Twitter to dump the president... even though any laws about that would violate the first amendment.