Trump is apparently about to display a remarkable confluence of idiotic, delusional, and self-important conclusions this coming Wednesday. According to his new spokesperson, Liz Harrington, an election-truther of the purest type, Trump will make a major announcement regarding how he intends to protect Americans’ First Amendment rights.

This ought to be fascinating.

As near all know, the First Amendment restrains the government. If a coffee shop in your area prohibits “all political talk within its doors,” it has every right to do so. The coffee shop is a private company and Constitutional civil rights do not apply to the coffee shop. The Civil Rights Act (a law, not a constitution), does prevent the coffee shop from discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity, etc. but the Constitution plays no role and the shop can prevent what people say in the store.

So we are at a loss to explain what private citizen Donald Trump believes he can do to protect Americans’ First Amendment rights. But apparently, he is going to make the effort:

pic.twitter.com/sAe2Owk2Lf

— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) July 3, 2021

We are going to go out on a limb here and say that we suspect that this significant announcement will involve some sort of con by which he can make money. Will he finally create that platform he’s been talking about since being punted off Twitter? It may relate to some sort of pre-doomed Trump business endeavor, especially because things haven’t gone well for Parler, where p*rn links have taken over just about every political reference.

The irony here is that the social media companies actually do have far too much power, despite the fact that Trump should be kept off all of them.

There are two viable solutions. One is to simply force them into becoming utilities, like the power company, and thus coming under quasi-government oversight. (Which would not mean that Trump would be suddenly reinstated.) The best solution would be to force the DOJ anti-trust division to bust the living sh*t out of all of them. Create 20 new baby faces. Hatch some bluebirds, orioles, robins, etc. Take Google and make some giggles, gaggles, wiggles, and goggles. Force them to have software compatible across all platforms, but make them compete for business.

Ironically, when the government did exactly that to Standard Oil, it made Rockefeller richer because his shares were divided up into each company and they competed harder. Consumers benefitted because monopolies are the inevitable end of unchecked capitalism and hurt citizens. But we don’t do anti-trust anymore, Exxon is now basically a monopoly, and Citizen’s United ensures that there’s no TDR coming to save us this time.

Quite a tangent. Bottom line, there is nothing Trump can do as a private citizen to protect First Amendment rights across social media platforms. They remain private companies, “No shirts, No Shoes, No calls for a coup, or no service.” It is that simple.

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