Hitler exploited the new mass medium of radio. Trump has Twitter.
Today dawned bright and sunny with a fresh descent into Trumpist darkness. The impeached “president,” currently on trial and awaiting his lackeys’ rote exoneration vote, lashed out against the House prosecutor who has laid bare his lawless corruption. And nothing can be done to police Trump when he uses Twitter for incendiary reasons – because Twitter’s rules of engagement are loose, and most demagoguery is constitutionally protected.
One passage in Trump’s morning tweet stood out. I’ve italicized it: “Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid a price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!”
What “price,” perchance, does Trump want him to pay?
It can’t be a political price, because Schiff’s California district, which he has served since 2001, is solidly blue. And it’s improbable that Schiff will be relegated to a Democratic minority by a red wave in 2020; the suburban women voters who powered the House blue wave in 2018 will likely renounce Trump and the GOP in even greater numbers this year.
So if Trump’s threat isn’t political, then what is it? Duh. It’s the same kind of threat that he tweeted last September: “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they never will be), it will cause Civil War-like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Ah. That’s the authoritarian we’ve come to know – threatening violence against those who seek to uphold the rule of law.
During an appearance today on Meet the Press, Schiff was asked about the tweet: “Do you take that as a threat?”
Schiff replied: “I think it’s intended to be.” You or I would have the same reaction, if we were targeted in that language by the troll-in-chief.
(By the way, according to the federal statutes – 18 U.S. Code 115 – anyone who “threatens to assault…a United States official…with intent to impede, intimidate, or interfere with such official…while engaged in the performance of official duties, or with intent to retaliate against such official” is committing a federal crime.)
Some smart people – including progressive commentator Eric Boehlert and ex-Democratic candidate Kamala Harris – have urged Twitter’s leaders to throw Trump off the platform. Kara Swisher, the prominent tech journalist, has been particularly fervent: “It is incumbent on the giant social platforms to porevent the president from dangerously weaponizing their tools. If not, when the history of this era is written, they will be judged as completely failing in their duties as citizens.”
But the problem – aside from clashing with First Amendment law, which protects robust and even incendiary speech (short “yelling fire in a crowded theater”) – is that if Trump were banned from Twitter, he’d be handed the perfect propaganda issue: proof that Big Technology was plotting to gag the champion of the aggrieved.
And Twitter’s leaders, understandably, don’t want to risk the slippery slope of deciding which tweets literally threaten violence or seem only to insinuate it. Hence, Twitter’s rules of engagement: “We do not allow users to make specific threats of violence against an individual (however) making vague or indirect threats are not actionable under this policy.”
Alas, there’s a big difference between some doofus in mommy’s basement tweeting “vague or indirect threats” – and the president of the United States doing the same. Nobody out there cares what the doofus tweets. Millions do care what Trump tweets. This country is littered with losers who are jonesing to make their mark by translating his incendiary words into action – as we’ve already seen. In 2018, after Trump repeatedly tweeted demagogic attacks against Obama, the Clintons, John Brennan, Maxine Waters, CNN, and George Soros, a devout Trump fan in Florida – duly inspired – mailed bombs to (among others) Obama, the Clintons, John Brennan, Maxine Waters, CNN, and George Soros.
As Kara Swisher sadly noted, “I doubt that Twitter executive and founder Jack Dorsey could have imagined that United States president would be so shameless and willing to cause harm by using the digital tools he built.” The only workable solution is to change presidents and end this digital reign of terror.