Donald Trump highlighted that he felt proud about how his administration is taking “the freedom of speech away” from those who burn the American flag. On Wednesday, during the “antifa roundtable” at the White House, the POTUS subtly admitted that an executive order he signed in August defies a major Supreme Court decision.
The decision deemed flag-burning a constitutionally protected political speech form. He claimed flag-burning could be a bigger potential threat than retrenching the First Amendment. Donald Trump said, “We took the freedom of speech away because that’s been through the courts, and the courts said ‘you have freedom of speech’ but what has happened is when you burn a flag, it agitates and irritates crowds — never seen anything like it, on both sides — and you end up with riots.”
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that, when it comes to burning the American flag during protests, his administration “took the freedom of speech away,” even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled nearly four decades ago that flag burning is protected by the First Amendment.… pic.twitter.com/HiCL2yVBhk
— PBS News (@NewsHour) October 8, 2025
The POTUS continued, “So we’re going on that basis. We’re looking at it from, not from the freedom of speech, which I always felt strongly about, but never passed the courts.” Regardless of what Trump says, the Supreme Court has a different outlook towards his claim of any “hypothetical harm.”
The Supreme Court deemed that the right to free expression is important than the POTUS’s rationale about a potential public safety hazard. However, when it comes to speech that promotes “imminent lawless action,” the Brandenburg v. Ohio affirms it as punishable.
Trump has a long crusade against flag-burning as a form of protest. A few months earlier, he finally took a major action, signing an executive order. It instructs the attorney general to prosecute those who “incite violence or otherwise violate our laws while desecrating this symbol of our country.”
Supreme Court precedent protects flag burning as expressive political speech. Trump’s post addresses the military, but the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. §1385) generally prohibits federal troops from enforcing domestic law off-base, except on military bases or under the… pic.twitter.com/9kO4L0yKtu
— TheSteadyState (@steadystate2025) October 4, 2025
At that time, the POTUS noted that there were many other things people could do to protest against the government. However, he thinks that “when you burn the American flag, it incites riots at levels that we’ve never seen before. People go crazy.”
Brian Haus, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, has taken a firm stand against Trump’s rationale at that time. He said, “If somebody is burning a flag in protest and they’re not telling people to go engage in violence, the government can’t look at that and say, ‘Oh, well, that could have the effect of causing violence to stir up, so therefore we get to prosecute.'”
