President Trump Criticizes Right to Protest

Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version

Last Tuesday, September 4, President Trump suggested that allowing people to protest at hearings for a Supreme Court nominee is “embarrassing for the country.”

He made these remarks during an interview in the Oval Office with the Daily Caller in response to protests at the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. In the interview, Trump stated, “I’m amazed that people allow the interruptions to continue. There are some people that just kept screaming. In the old days, we used to throw them out. Today, I guess they just keep screaming.”

Trump also commented, “I don’t know why they don’t take care of a situation like that. I think it’s embarrassing for the country to allow protesters. You don’t even know what side they’re on. To allow somebody to stand up and scream from the top of their lungs — and nobody does anything about it — is, frankly…I think it is an embarrassment.”

According to the Washington Post, more than 70 demonstrators were arrested at last week’s hearing.

These statements represent only the president’s most recent attacks on free expression; in the last few weeks, he has also called for censorship of Google searches and threatened legal action against Simon & Schuster for publication of Omarosa Manigault Newman’s book Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House, a tell-all account of her time in the Trump administration.