Former President Donald Trump on Monday again suggested those who burn the American flag be jailed, saying he would work to undermine the right do so affirmed by the Supreme Court under the First Amendment.
Trump spoke to a gathering of the National Guard Association of the United States in Detroit in which he lamented the country was “closer to World War III” than ever, attacking President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris over the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Republican presidential nominee then went on to say, if elected, he would work to ban the burning of the American flag, a pledge he has made on the campaign trail for years.
“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,” Trump told the crowd. “We gotta do it. They say it’s not constitutional. They say, ‘Sir, that’s unconstitutional.’ We’ll make it constitutional.”
“You burn an American flag, you’ll go to jail for one year.”
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on the issue in 1989, deciding in Texas v. Johnson that flag burning fell under First Amendment protections of free speech.
“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,” the court ruled at the time.
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Trump re-upped his calls for a jail sentence last month after some protesters burned an American flag in Washington, D.C., in protest of the U.S.’ handling of the war between Israel and Hamas.
“Now, people will say, ‘Oh, it’s unconstitutional.’ Those are stupid people,” Trump said on Fox News in July. “Those are stupid people that say that. We have to work in Congress to get a one-year jail sentence.”
“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.”
Harris also condemned the protests in Washington last month and the burning of the flag, but she did not call for the act to be barred.
“That flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America,” she said at the time. “It should never be desecrated in that way.”
