Donald Trump, the most controversial American candidate in over a decade cannot be protested under force of US law as he is protected against protest now that he has secret service with him at all times.
This revelation came about following Monday’s protest where a reporter was choke-slammed to the ground and where local police escorted out two dozen black protestors.
Trump’s Georgia protesters were ordered, instead, to a “designated protest zone” about five-minutes away leading the world to wonder, whatever happened to the First Amendment in America. It turns out, if you have Secret Service protection, your opposition’s First Amendment rights have been legislated away.
In 2012, House Republicans passed H.R. 347 which makes it “a crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, to knowingly impede or disrupt conduct of Government business or official functions in locations guarded by the Secret Service” which includes political campaign rallies.
Donald Trump was granted Secret Service protection in November in light of the raucous crowds and repeated death threats that risked overburdening his personal security staff.
The ACLU’s Gate Rottman argues that expelling campaign protestors under color and threat of law is a misrepresentation of the law designed to “suppress lawful protest by relegating it to particular locations at a public event.”
In fact, “free speech zones are frequently used to target certain viewpoints or to keep protesters away from cameras.” The idea of protesting an enclosed event from outside and five minutes away hardly provides protesters with the hope that their voice will be heard.
On Monday, dozens of black protesters at Trump’s Georgia rally were split into two groups and directed to separate locations to carry on their protest – one group protested from a distant field shielded from the venue by a set of tennis courts and the other outside a church about a quarter mile away.
