Speaking at a recent campaign speech during a stop in Detroit, Michigan, former President Donald Trump reiterated his campaign pledge to devise a harsh penalty for those caught burning the American flag. Flag-burning has been made protected speech by the United States Supreme Court, but the former president has said that he will make such a punishment constitutional.
Trump’s speech came when he spoke to a gathering of members of the National Guard Association of the United States in Detroit. During the speech, his ire was mainly focused on the withdrawal from Afghanistan carried out by the Biden-Harris Administration and how disastrous and deadly that horrific withdrawal was for us and our allies in Afghanistan.
But then, likely sparked by the chaos surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, former President Donald Trump turned from the disaster in Afghanistan to the topic of those who burn the American flag, whether in protest or otherwise. He vowed to go on the legal offensive against those who do so and that he would work to make punishing them constitutional.
As background, flag burning was made a form of protected speech by the Supreme Court in 1989, when SCOTUS ruled in a 5-4 decision in the case Texas v. Johnson that burning an American flag is a form of speech that is protected by the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, and thus that punishment of flag burning is not constitutional, though there can still be ordinances that prevent burning anything in public.
Commenting in the case on why flag burning, though disagreeable and bad, is protected, the Texas v. Johnson court said, “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
Former President Trump, in any case, said, “Burning the American flag, I want to get a law passed … you burn an American flag you go to jail for one year. You gotta do it.” He continued, We gotta do it. They say it’s not constitutional. They say, ‘Sir, that’s unconstitutional.’ We’ll make it constitutional.” He added, “You burn an American flag, you’ll go to jail for one year.”
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This isn’t the first time that Trump has called to prosecute those who burn American flags. Speaking to Fox News Channel in July of this year, the former president said, “Now, people will say, ‘Oh, it’s unconstitutional.’ Those are stupid people. Those are stupid people that say that. We have to work in Congress to get a one-year jail sentence.”
Continuing in that series of comments on the flag-burning matter and punishment for it, the former president also called for a one-year sentence for flag burners. He said, on that note, “When they’re allowed to stomp on the flag and put lighter fluid on the flag and set it afire, when you’re allowed to do that — you get a one-year jail sentence, and you’ll never see it again.”