No, the issue is that by blocking you, it is not simply him not listening to you, he is also making you unable to hear him (which is a problem with official government dictates coming from his account).
Most importantly, however, you cannot interact with his tweets, either - you’re blocked from replying, so therefore removed from the public forum at his whim.
Look, if the Framers & Founders would have thought that the President blocking Twitter accounts was in any way relevant, they would have put something in the Constitution to cover that. Right?
These are fair points. I’m sure our Supreme Court (average age 103) will be able to sort it out.
All of the points everyone is bringing up here is exactly why Obama’s staff told him not to use his personal Twitter at all while President, and didn’t give him they keys to the official POTUS account. I believe Trump was given the same advice by his staff, but of course he ignored it.
When I saw “average … 103” my brain assumed the middle word was IQ. It was age, which is another fair dig.
Aside from that, I guess want to say that:
This nonsensical personal/official distinction is the same kind of fiction Trump and his enablers have engaged in for years now. He gets to say outrageous things, and then his enablers retroactively decide whether he was “joking,” or “serious,” or some other hybrid category where we’re supposed to take him seriously but not literally. Typos aren’t actually typos, they’re coded messages for true believers.
It’s the same phenomenon here: he uses his Twitter account to make policy announcements, attack political enemies, and promote his goals, but he wants all the benefits of using a “personal” account so he can’t actually be held accountable for what he says and held to the same standards any other President would be held to. It seems like a silly fight about stupid Twitter, but it’s insidious.
ETA:
Do you agree that it would raise 1A issues if the President held a rally in Times Square open to the public, and had the Secret Service kick out anyone holding a sign that was critical of his policies or had expressed opinions in the past that the President did not like, and allowed those with pro-Trump signs to remain?
I would pay money to not have to “interact with his tweets” or hear him.
What was the most important government dictate that has ever come from his account?
I think that would be allowed under the first amendment, and my reason for thinking it would be allowed is that elected officials hold rallies all the time and the people who attend them are plainly, regularly screened to get favourable crowds. People talk about allowable “time and place” restrictions. The Secret Service gets a lot of leeway to do what they want because they can say anything is about security.
I think your comparison to a campaign rally gets to the heart of the problem. I agree that at a private event where a political party is choosing who gets in and who doesn’t like a fundraiser or a campaign rally, Trump could hand-pick the signs without 1A problems. BUT, my hypothetical (and the issue at hand) is not a private event, hence the rub.
And the reference to “time and place” restrictions cuts the other way here. Those restrictions deal with placing reasonable limits on things like noise or rallies on streets that can handle the load, etc., they don’t support blanket removal of speech.
Even for actual public events they’ve been using “free speech zones” for a long time.
I’m a little worried I’m getting confused between what I think is and what I think ought to be:
For bringing signs I think is and ought probably align okay. They could ban all signs from an event or force everyone with signs to stand in the “signs” zone (conveniently not visible from the stage). If you said they were trampling on your write to speak they could just say the signs would block other people’s view and if you have something to say you can write them a letter.
For the issue of excluding you based on your social media posts or previous speech I think they could get away from it by citing “security” (and if you argued then they might have to make you into a security threat). That’s obviously gross, and seems like it is a free speech issue.
So I guess I agree (or partly agree?) that if the reason you are not allowed to see the president’s tweets is in retribution to your previous speech, that’s running into free speech issues.
Agreed, and that’s what’s happening here.
Presumably that is what is happening in many cases. But if Trump preemptively blocked Rosie O’Donnell just because Trump hate’s O’Donnell as a person, that wouldn’t raise the same issue (though I’d still say it’s wrong for other reasons, as I said above, they should mute people they don’t like).
Also, I’ll add the caveat that I think they may be able to successfully argue to the courts that being blocked by the president on twitter is okay because there is absolutely no value whatsoever in any of the president’s tweets. They are pure garbage, and you lose nothing by being blocked, so you aren’t being punished for your speech. I say this only because I sincerely wish they would make this argument.
I want to add that I’ve had a think about the analogy between Twitter and a live event and realized what it is that doesn’t work for me there. With a live event if you are denied access you are being denied something that can’t really be replaced. With twitter you can create a new account or visit someone’s feed while not even logged in. So if you still want to see the tweets being blocked is at worst a very minor inconvenience.
Of course “minor inconvenience” could also be said of having to use a different water fountain, so sometimes what looks like a minor inconvenience is an important part of a broader system that it profoundly oppressive. I’m not sure that case can be made here.
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