Whether some, none, or all of the President’s tweets are “official,” is not dispositive to the question of whether his @RealDonaldTrump account is a limited public forum.
Even the best Dalia can do with this is a lukewarm observation that the previously less serious Knight complaint now might have “more teeth.”
It’s a hijack if you offered it up knowing it to be irrelevant. It’s simply a wrong argument if you had no idea.
That’s not a remotely accurate characterization of what I said.
I don’t “expect,” anything except to demonstrate the fleeting nature of your supposed convictions when measured with real-world consequences.
I expect small payments if I wager small amounts and then win. That’s how wagering works.
Or maybe it’s a side issue that ties into the problems with the President’s Twitter account?
But thank you anyway for your “Either you are wrong or you are wrong” analysis.
Edited to add: response to post #120
Can someone explain to me what’s wrong with this simple argument?
Factual claim: Anyone can read Trump’s tweets. Twitter-blocking just limits who can reply to those tweets in the same forum, and question/rebut him directly there.
If the only televised questioning Trump chooses to put up with is that of Fox and Friends, is that a First Amendment violation? (I assume the answer is NO.)
Then how does his limiting his questioners on Twitter Constitutionally differ from his limiting his questioners on television?
I don’t see anything wrong with it.
It’s sort of like a politician appearing on 60 Minutes. Only CBS is interviewing him, but that doesn’t violate the First Amendment rights of the rest of the press or the public who can’t participate in the interview.
Regards,
Shodan
I think it’s generally right, but here’s my best counterargument:
The age of social media has created fora that are sui generis – that is, unique and not susceptible to analogy to traditional forum constraints.
There’s a difference between inviting a single interviewer (or program) and Twitter, because Twitter amounts to a general invitation to the public. The government doesn’t have to invite the public – the President can choose to limit his interviews to selected reporters. But if the public is invited, then the government cannot discriminate on the basis of viewpoint. By blocking some Twitter users and not others, the government is engaging in viewpoint discrimination.
And of course the formerly private Trump Twitter account has transformed into a government forum because of, um, reasons. For example, we learn that White House staffers are maintaining the account and providing content.
The ethics are simple. First and foremost, he is a citizen. When he tweets, he is doing so as any other citizen and as such, if he wants to block someone, he’s perfectly within his rights to do so. This ain’t rocket surgery.
I know you’re playing devil’s advocate on both points, of course, but here’s my take on the strength of those arguments:
The difference between inviting a single interviewer and blocking a single person on Twitter…that may have legal significance, and you’d know better than I, of course.
OTOH, the mathematician in me shrugs: one operation is merely the complement of the other. There’s no difference between inviting X, Y, and Z over to interview you, and disinviting everyone else; there’s no difference between blocking A, B, C, and D on Twitter, and allowing everyone besides A, B, C, and D to respond to your tweets. Including only set S is the same as excluding its complement, and excluding only set S is the same as including its complement.
But that’s how a mathematician thinks, and that doesn’t always extrapolate well to other fields.
But the @realDonaldTrump private Twitter account: Trump’s using it to make policy pronouncements to the general public a way that’s indistinguishable from his use of the @POTUS handle. It may be a private account in origin, but he’s using it as a tool of public statecraft. He’s neither communicating privately with this account, nor is he communicating about subjects only tangentially related to his office. The one is just as much a public forum as the other.
As I look at a selection of tweets from Trump prior to his assuming office, and a selection tweets following, I don’t quite see the massive change. In other words, before he became President, his tweets did not look all that different in terms of subjects. (Or coherency, or grammar, but that’s a side note). His tirades against “fake news,” for example, are tangential to his office, and seem to occupy his attention.
You literally just agreed with him in your last post. Because of how wages work, you inherently are setting things up where you get money (or don’t lose money) if you are right. And a lot of people have a problem with that.
It’s a dishonest tactic. It allows you to pretend you to use your own stubbornness as a tool, instead of just making good arguments. You know that, as a matter of principle, most people will not take you up on the bets. So it makes you seem more right, without actually having to make stronger arguments.
It also assumes that the person making the argument is dishonest. I don’t want to bet, but you do. That makes it seem like you honestly believe what you say, while I don’t. But that’s not true. There are so many other factors, like whether I think it’s even moral to waste money in this manner, rather than use it for good.
It would be one thing if you PM’d people, so they could turn you down without that rhetorical effect. But you don’t. Because you want that effect. You want to seem like you clearly right because the other person will not bet.
And that’s just not true.
But it wouldn’t be wasting money. You would have TWICE as much money to use for good if you are correct, which you say you are. So by not betting, you are letting money go to waste.
By not betting, you are not confident in your opinion. Seems plain enough to me.
I use the “Wanna bet on it?” game all the time IRL to determine if a person is just bullshitting or not.
Oh, no!
What principle is that, exactly?
How is it a waste, specifically?
It isn’t. But I don’t claim that it is. What is true is people are very willing to make less grounded claims when there are no real world negatives to the claim, and less willing when there is a tangible benefit or loss in play, as numerous studies have demonstrated. I cited one above.
When he plays golf, he’s doing so as any other citizen, and not entitled to Secret Service protection, right?
Not as a matter of constitutional law, correct.
Well, nobody is entitled to Secret Service protection as a matter of constitutional law; it’s a statutory enactment. But the point is that in many important respects, the POTUS is never an ordinary citizen so long as he remains in office. I could have used executive immunity as an example instead, but I didn’t think Clothahump would understand that one.
So the question is: does the President surrender his First Amendment right as a citizen to use a Twitter account the same way other citizens do (that is, free from the requirements to observe viewpoint-neutral moderation)?
No, the question with regard to Clothahump’s post is whether the matter is as cut-and-dried as “he’s just acting as a private citizen.”
So if someone hacks this Presidential Citizen’s Twitter account and releases a bunch of insulting and/or havoc causing tweets in his name, aimed at various influential persons and world leaders, then the worst that person should expect in the way of punishment is possible loss of their Twitter account, right?
No. Hijacking an online account is criminally punishable under the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act and various state laws, regardless of whether the target account belongs to POTUS or Joe Schmoe.
And what kind of punishment is usually doled out for hacking some citizen’s account?