Trump again demands prison sentence for burning the American flag

Former President Donald Trump again proposed jailing those who burn the American flag on Monday, saying he would work to undermine the right upheld by the Supreme Court under the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Trump spoke to a gathering of the National Guard Association of the United States in Detroit and lamented that the country is “closer to World War III” than ever before. He attacked President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris over the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Republican presidential candidate also said that if elected, he would support a ban on the burning of the American flag – a promise he has made for years on the campaign trail.

“I want to pass a law that would allow the burning of the American flag… if you burn an American flag, you go to jail for a year. That's what you have to do,” Trump told the crowd. “We have to do it. They say it's unconstitutional. They say, 'Sir, that's unconstitutional.' We're going to make it constitutional.”

“If you burn an American flag, you will go to jail for a year.”

In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson by a 5-4 majority that flag burning was protected by the First Amendment's right to free speech.

“If there is a principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or objectionable,” the court ruled at the time.

Trump reiterated his call for a prison sentence last month after some demonstrators in Washington DC burned an American flag in protest against the US handling of the war between Israel and Hamas.

“Now people are going to say, 'Oh, that's unconstitutional.' Those are stupid people,” Trump said on Fox News in July. “These are stupid people who say things like that. We need to work in Congress to get a one-year prison sentence passed.”

“If they're allowed to trample on the flag, pour lighter fluid on it and set it on fire, if you're allowed to do that, you'll get a year in jail and never see it again.”

Harris also condemned last month's protests in Washington and the burning of the flag, but stopped short of calling for the law to be banned.

“This flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America,” she said at the time. “It should never be desecrated in this way.”

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