KLAMATH FALLS, OR— Trump Threatens to Sue Saturday Night Live
Trump threw another temper tantrum over being made fun of on Saturday Night Live and sent out a totally unhinged tweet about how unfairly he’s treated, now it can’t be legal and that it should be tested in court. Uh, Donald…it has been tested in court. And you’d lose, badly and immediately. As you should.
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
"A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?"
You see Donald, there’s this pesky little thing called the First Amendment. And never are its protections higher and more impenetrable than when the president is being criticized or ridiculed. It doesn’t matter whether it bothers you or not, you do not have the power to stop it, nor should you have it. You’re just showing your authoritarian views yet again.
Now here’s the punchline to the entire thing. On CNN, Trump sycophant David Urban actually said of Trump, “I’m sure the president knows that people say bad things about him. He’s got pretty thick skin.” And we’re back in that alternate universe that the Trump people live in, where up is down, black is white and Trump has a thick skin. I’ve never seen a human being with thinner skin than Trump, for crying out loud.
Newly elected Crenshaw pushes back on Trump criticism of 'Saturday Night Live'. Rep.-elect Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) is pushing back against President Trump's suggestion that media coverage and programs like "Saturday Night Live" be challenged in court, calling the First Amendment "the backbone of American exceptionalism."
Crenshaw late Sunday responded to Trump's tweet by agreeing with the president that the media "deliberately misleads and spins."
"It's legal, and it needs to remain legal," he added, however. "The 1st Amendment is the backbone of American exceptionalism."
Trump earlier Sunday lashed out at NBC and "SNL" hours after the comedy program featured a sketch that depicted life for Trump administration staffers had the president never been elected.
"A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live," Trump tweeted. "It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials.
Should be tested in courts, can't be legal?"
Satirical speech and political speech are both protected by the First Amendment.
Trump has in the past suggested he may consider revoking NBC's broadcast license. Broadcasting licenses are granted to individual stations instead of networks like NBC, however.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai said on multiple occasions last year that the FCC would not revoke those licenses on the basis of a station's content.
Crenshaw, who was elected last month to represent Texas's 2nd Congressional District, gained national attention after "SNL" comedian Pete Davidson mocked him for his eye patch, which he wears as a result of an injury sustained while serving as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan.
Hustler's parody, depicted above, includes the unauthorized use of a publicity photograph of Falwell and a near-exact duplicate of the typesetting used in a concurrent Campari advertising campaign.[
Falwell v Flynt Trial (1984) "At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. The freedom to speak one's mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty – and thus a good unto itself – but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole. We have therefore been particularly vigilant to ensure that individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentally imposed sanctions."
The First Amendment envisions that the sort of robust political debate that takes place in a democracy will occasionally yield speech critical of public figures who are "intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions or, by reason of their fame, shape events in areas of concern to society at large".
In New York Times, the Court held that the First Amendment gives speakers immunity from sanction with respect to their speech concerning public figures unless their speech is both false and made with "actual malice", i.e., with knowledge of its falsehood or with reckless disregard for the truth of the statement. Although false statements lack inherent value, the "breathing space" that freedom of expression requires in order to flourish must tolerate occasional false statements, lest there be an intolerable chilling effect on speech that does have constitutional value.
To be sure, in other areas of the law, the specific intent to inflict emotional harm enjoys no protection. But with respect to speech concerning public figures, penalizing the intent to inflict emotional harm, without also requiring that the speech that inflicts that harm to be false, would subject political cartoonists and other satirists to large damage awards. "The appeal of the political cartoon or caricature is often based on exploitation of unfortunate physical traits or politically embarrassing events – an exploitation often calculated to injure the feelings of the subject of the portrayal". This was certainly true of the cartoons of Thomas Nast, who skewered Boss Tweed in the pages of Harper's Weekly. From a historical perspective, political discourse would have been considerably poorer without such cartoons.
Even if Nast's cartoons were not particularly offensive, Falwell argued that the Hustler parody advertisement in this case was so "outrageous" as to take it outside the scope of First Amendment protection. But "outrageous" is an inherently subjective term, susceptible to the personal taste of the jury empaneled to decide a case. Such a standard "runs afoul of our longstanding refusal to allow damages to be awarded because the speech in question may have an adverse emotional impact on the audience". So long as the speech at issue is not "obscene" and thus not subject to First Amendment protection, it should be subject to the actual-malice standard when it concerns public figures.
Clearly, Falwell was a public figure for purposes of First Amendment law. Because the district court found in favor of Flynt on the libel charge, there was no dispute as to whether the parody could be understood as describing facts about Falwell or events in which he participated. Accordingly, because the parody did not make false statements that were implied to be true, it could not be the subject of damages under the New York Times actual-malice standard. The Court thus reversed the judgment of the Fourth Circuit.
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