President Donald Trump speaks with reporters as he departs the White House, Friday, May 1.
Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated PressRemember when Democrats were up in arms over an ad critical of Joe Biden’s Ukraine dealings and demanding Facebook take it down? Now the outrage is reversed as the Trump campaign cries foul over a progressive Super Pac spot on the President’s handling of the coronavirus. More than demanding its removal, the Trump campaign is suing a Wisconsin station for airing it. The lawsuit should be dead on arrival but it’s instructive for the self-defeating standards the campaign proposes for controlling political speech.
The 30-second ad from Priorities USA is called “Exponential Threat,” and it plays audio snippets with captions of President Trump’s remarks against a backdrop of a graph showing a rising number of coronavirus cases. In the first snippet, President Trump says “The coronavirus,” and in the second he says “this is their new hoax.”
Democrats have flogged Mr. Trump’s “new hoax” comment, made at a rally in late February, to suggest he was denying the existence of the virus. In context it’s clear he was referring to efforts to use the virus as a political weapon against him. He was defending his response and comparing Democratic attacks to the just-finished impeachment saga.
But campaign ads don’t do nuance and never have. Even those that are false are almost always protected by the First Amendment. The Trump campaign should know better than to ask the courts to referee what political statements may be uttered in the heat of a campaign.
It’s especially bizarre that in its complaint the President’s campaign appeals to the supposed wisdom of the media’s “independent fact-checkers,” like Snopes and PolitiFact, in sorting political truth from falsity. It notes that the Washington Post gave a similar Biden ad “‘Four Pinocchios,’ which is its highest rating for false information.”
Nice to know, but the judgment of journalists has no bearing on whether speech is constitutionally protected. A world in which broadcast stations fear paying damages if they air advocacy that goes against the often partisan judgment of Washington opinion writers would not be favorable to the President.
Liberals don’t have much credibility in criticizing the Trump lawsuit. They have been arguing for years that political speech by Super PACs deserves no constitutional protection. But those of us who believe in the First Amendment know that campaign distortions must be resolved by candidates and voters, not the courts.
The Trump campaign surely knows this but may want to impose legal costs on stations that air critical ads. That’s an abuse of the legal system and a bad look for a President who paints himself as a defender of basic liberties against progressive overreach.
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