Educating Conservatives: On Satire and Constitutional Law: 'What Will Trump Do to Combat SNL?'

What will Trump do to combat SNL?

Wow. This question is either written by a foreigner who is unfamiliar with U.S. constitutional concepts, particularly those related to the First Amendment of the Constitution, or by a Trump supporter with minimal education. In other words: it’s a ridiculous question.

Okay, first off, as President of the United States, there is pitifully little that Donald Trump can do to “combat” Saturday Night Live. Satire, especially political satire, is as old as civilization itself, and under our system of laws, it is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

A political cartoon satirizing Thomas Jefferson during the 1800 Presidential election cycle.

Anti-Lincoln political cartoon of the Civil War era.

Greater men than Donald J. Trump have been lampooned and/or criticized in the media since the founding of the United States. Many - perhaps all - of them might have privately grumbled or complained about the criticisms and barbs shot in their direction, but none of them have complained about it as much as the 45th President and his “Make America Great Again” crowd.

As I wrote in my recent answer to a related Trump vs. SNL question: Alex Diaz-Granados's answer to Why is Saturday Night Live so disrespectful to Donald Trump? Why isn't there a law making it illegal to slander the President of the United States?

Saturday Night Live is treating the current President of the United States the same way it has treated every other Chief Executive since it premiered in 1975. Obviously, the tenor of the humor depends on the personality of the President in office, the policies he promotes, his speech pattern, and the decisions he makes. If the person in the Oval Office is basically decent (think Gerald R. Ford, George H.W. Bush, or Jimmy Carter), the satire is not as biting as, say, the Alec Baldwin representations of the current occupant of the Oval Office.

But back to the question…What will Trump do to “combat” SNL?

Legally? As President of the United States, he can’t do anything to combat Constitutionally-protected speech. Donald Trump is not an absolute monarch or a dictator, even though he has a tendency to admire authoritarian rulers such as Russia’s Putin, North Korea’s Kim, and the Philippines’ Duterte. He can complain about it and wish he could “combat” SNL to stifle the satire, but unless he decides to violate his oath of office, Trump can do nothing…zip…zilch…nada.

• US Constitution, Article II, Section 1
• Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The only viable options Trump has in this case are:

• Ignore Saturday Night Live and - at most - ask his followers to not watch the show
• Man up and stop being a thin-skinned complainer

As I said in my previous Trump-versus-SNL post:

Political satire, which is the type of comedy practiced by Lorne Michaels’ long-running comedy-sketch series when it lampoons any sitting President, is one of the oldest forms of satirical comment in the humanities. As long as there have been kings, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, and other heads of state, there have always been comedians and/or political cartoonists who, in their routines or drawings, comment on the political realities of the day.

To those diehard loyalists of those heads of state, who tend to see things in a different light as the opposition, any criticism of their nation-state’s leadership is often interpreted as an unwarranted attack. And because the satire is often a response to a policy or political philosophy that the head of state promotes, and the loyalists support, then the jokes don’t seem funny. Indeed, as the tone of the question clearly implies, the supporters of the head of state - especially those who believe that their beloved leader can do no wrong - consider jokes, political cartoons, and satirical sketches on shows such as Saturday Night Live as “slander.”

I’m not a lawyer, nor am I well-versed on legal terminology, but if Alec Baldwin’s sketch lampooning the President’s rambling, often inarticulate, and overly long declaration of a national emergency is based on the speech and the President ’s traits, it’s not slander. As someone else said in an answer to this insincere and loaded question, “It’s not slander if it’s true.”