President Trump has renewed his attacks on flag burning, bragging in extraordinary and false remarks that he “took the freedom of speech away” and made it a crime punishable by a year in prison to set fire to an American flag.
Mr. Trump made that claim on Wednesday during apparently off-the-cuff remarks at a White House-hosted “round table” on antifa, the loosely defined left-wing antifascist movement, with Attorney General Pam Bondi, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other officials, as well as various right-wing influencers who have made videos of themselves confronting left-wing protesters of Trump administration policies.
In his opening remarks at the discussion, Mr. Trump invoked an incident in which one of the influencers, Nick Sortor, was arrested last week in Portland, Ore., after a scuffle with protesters outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. A video posted on social media appears to show Mr. Sortor stopping a protester from burning a flag before the confrontation, and he brought the partly burned remnants to the round table.
Prosecutors later dropped plans to charge Mr. Sortor with disorderly conduct, saying any physical contact he initiated was self-defense. Conservatives have expressed outrage over his arrest, and the Justice Department has said it will investigate the Portland police.
At the round table, after Mr. Trump noted Mr. Sortor’s presence, he diverted to a tangent about flag burning, saying he had instituted a “one-year penalty for inciting riots.”
“We took the freedom of speech away because that’s been through the courts and the courts said, you have freedom of speech,” Mr. Trump said. “But what has happened is when they burn a flag, it agitates and irritates crowds.”
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