This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on December 2, 2016 A tweet by Donald Trump earlier this week caused eye-rolling among people with an even cursory knowledge of constitutional law. “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag—if they do, there must be consequences—perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail,” Trump pronounced. Burning the flag is pretty despicable, but it’s a form of protected free speech, which was made clear by Supreme Court decisions in 1989 and 1990. Even uber conservative Justice Antonin Scalia concurred. But the tsk-tsking among elites amounted to another example of the phenomenon that Salena Zito observed in The Atlantic back in September: “The press takes him [Trump] literally, but not seriously, his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” He says things for effect, such as “there ought to be a law” or “it ticks me off when people do this.” The simple fact is that there are a lot more Americans who agree with Trump that people shouldn’t be burning flags than there are people who are parsing Supreme Court decisions.
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