Trump’s Twitter accounts are part of a public forum and everyone needs to have access to them, even critics
Concerns over what Trump can and cannot do on his Twitter accounts has been going on for a long time. Even the deletion of his messages has been discussed since everything the US President puts out into the public needs to remain there for the world to see, just like any other official document.
“This Twitter account operates as a ‘designated public forum’ for First Amendment purposes, and accordingly to viewpoint-based blocking of our clients is unconstitutional, ” read a letter several Twitter users sent to Trump on Tuesday. “We ask that you unblock them and any others who have been blocked for similar reasons.”
The letter lets it be understood that unless the Trump administration complies, a lawsuit will follow. The short of it is that the US President does not have a right to exclude his critics from engaging in his posts. This, however, is just another example of how Donald Trump blocks off those who have a different opinion to his own, just as he’s done to perfectly credible media outlets who he claims to be “fake news, ” such as CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, Washington Post or New York Times, to name a few.
“Though the architects of the Constitution surely didn’ t contemplate presidential Twitter accounts, they understood that the president must not be allowed to banish views from public discourse simply because he finds them objectionable. Having opened this forum to all comers, the president can’ t exclude people from it merely because he dislikes what they’ re saying, ” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the organization that represents the Twitter users blocked by Trump.
