On Thursday’s episode of “The View,” co-host Joy Behar asked why President Donald Trump has yet to be “charged” with “hate speech.”
“Why can’t he be brought up on charges of ‘hate speech’?” Behar asked sincerely. “Why can’t he be sued by the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] for ‘hate speech’?”
“I don’t get it,” she said. “How does he get away with this?”
Behar was referencing Trump’s recent tweets about four freshman congresswomen — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — that sparked a media frenzy, as well as the president’s campaign rally on Wednesday night in North Carolina where “send her back” was briefly chanted by the crowd about Rep. Omar. Trump condemned the chant on Thursday, telling the press: “I disagree with it … I felt a little bit badly about it … I was not happy with it, I disagree with it.”
“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets on Sunday. “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough.”
“I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!” he added.
Behar’s idea that Trump should apparently be silenced and charged by the government flies in the face of constitutional freedoms. The First Amendment protects Americans, even Donald Trump, from being persecuted for controversial speech that might be deemed subjective “hate speech” from opponents. One would think Behar, as a comedian with a history of controversial statements herself, would be well aware of this.
Earlier this year, famed media figure Christiane Amanpour said Trump supporters chanting “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton were engaging in “hate speech” and should have been banned from doing so, as highlighted by The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra.
“‘Lock her up’ was a feature of the 2016 Trump campaign. Do you, in retrospect, wish that people like yourself, the head of the FBI, the people in charge of law and order, had shut down that language?” Amanpour asked former FBI Director James Comey. “That it was dangerous potentially, that it could have created violence, that it’s kind of ‘hate speech’ — should it have been allowed?”
“That’s not a role for government to play,” Comey answered. “The beauty of this country is people can say what they want, even if it is misleading and it’s demagoguery. The people who should have shut it down were Republicans … It wasn’t a role for government to play.”
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