Trump says we should limit the First Amendment

On Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a show of selectively exiting the presidential race and endorsing Donald Trump, praising the former president as a champion of free speech. Less than a week later, Trump is already vowing to crush First Amendment protections if elected in November.

On Monday, Trump complained about the resistance to a proposal to sentence people to up to a year in prison for burning the American flag.

“I want to pass a law… If you burn an American flag, you go to jail for a year. You have to do it — you have to do it,” Trump said.

“They say, ‘Sir, that’s unconstitutional.’ We make it constitutional.”

People can tell Trump that locking up anyone who burns the flag is unconstitutional because flag burning is protected by the First Amendment. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas vs. Johnson that while desecration of the flag may be reprehensible, “if there is a fundamental principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea merely because the public finds the idea itself offensive or distasteful.”

RFK Jr. has long alleged that the government is censoring him in various ways, and on Friday blamed his failed attempt to mount a viable presidential race on “16 months of censorship, of the fact that he couldn’t get on any network except Fox.”

Kennedy added that the Democratic Party had become “the party of war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, big money.” He cited Trump’s positions on free speech, the war in Ukraine and the war on children as justification for his support for the former president. “These are the primary reasons that convinced me to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent, and now to endorse President Trump,” he said.

The show of support may also have had something to do with Trump’s receptiveness to bringing Kennedy into his administration if he wins. Earlier this month The Washington Post reported that Kennedy’s campaign had attempted to arrange meetings with Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign to discuss a possible role for him in her administration if she won the White House — to no avail. Kennedy had similar conversations with the Trump campaign around the Republican National Convention.

“He invited me to form a unity government. We agreed that we could continue to criticize each other on the issues that we disagree on,” Kennedy said of his talks with Trump on Friday.

Trump donor Omeed Malik told NBC News that same day that Kennedy had not been explicitly promised a Cabinet-level position, but that “if they’re successful, there are plenty of roles” where Kennedy could be placed. “I think the health area is one of them,” Malik added of the vaccine conspiracy theorist.

Trump has said publicly that he is considering inviting Kennedy to his administration. “I like him very much. I have a lot of respect for him,” Trump said when asked last week ahead of Kennedy’s endorsement whether he would consider nominating Kennedy to a role in his administration if he won. “I probably would, if something like that were to happen. He’s a very different kind of guy — a very smart guy. And yes, I would be honored by that endorsement, certainly.”