Ban Donald Trump from Twitter

Hot on the heels of last week's outrageous tweet--in which Donald Trump suggested that we either imprison people who burn the flag or strip them of their citizenship--it's time for Twitter to take action and ban Trump from the service.

Once the self-described free-speech wing of the free-speech party, Twitter has for the past several years vocally defended its prerogative to ban anyone (on the right) from its service for essentially any reason it sees fit.

Since it caters to celebrities and uses their fame to promote its own brand, Twitter has been hesitant to ban anyone famous in real life from the service regardless of his or her bad, abusive behavior. One imagines Twitter might make an exception for Trump. Undoubtedly, the service could find some justification for applying the targeted-harassment rubric to the president-elect.

Some conservatives would be upset if Twitter undertook such a draconian action. After all, calling for the punishment of those engaged in the political activity of burning the flag is a time-honored bipartisan tradition, a measure supported by a number of Republicans as well as, well, Hillary Clinton (when the flag-burning was intended to "incite violence"). And Dianne Feinstein. And Harry Reid.

Let's also not forget that burning the flag isn't the only form of expression that some elected officials want to ban. After all, the liberal consensus is that Citizens United v. FEC--a case that revolved around banning the distribution of a documentary criticizing an elected official ahead of an election--must be overturned as soon as possible. For the good of the republic, naturally. Then there's the insidious-yet-growing idea that "hate speech" should not be protected by the First Amendment.

So, sure, Trump is not really an outlier in his desire to curtail First Amendment freedoms; he's simply more visible and more concerning, given that he's soon to be clothed in immense power. Yet Twitter should still strongly consider banning him from the platform for a pair of important reasons.

The first is the sanity of the press corps. Like Pavlov's dogs salivating over every ding, we cannot help ourselves when it comes to the president-elect's Twitter feed. Because Twitter's self-bubbling leads writers to believe that whatever is being discussed via 140 characters or fewer at any given time is of utmost importance, whatever dumb thing Trump tweets is sure to dominate the headlines and cable chyrons every day.

The second reason for taking Trump's Twitter account away from him permanently is that it's for his own good. Somewhat lost in the shuffle of the big shock on election night was the report that for the final week or so of the campaign, Trump had his Twitter access revoked by his staff, a move that kept his flamboyant comments out of the media and kept focus on Clinton and the FBI investigation.

Editorial on 12/04/2016

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