Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume slammed President Donald Trump’s executive order on Monday that directed the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute people for burning the American flag.
Trump signed the executive order against flag burning on Monday despite the Supreme Court ruling that the activity is a legitimate political expression protected by the U.S. Constitution. Hume suggested on social media platform X that Trump’s executive order is unconstitutional, comparing Trump to the late President George H.W. Bush.
“George HW Bush ran against flag burning in 1988 and spent a whole week campaigning on the issue. But he called for a constitutional amendment to ban the practice. He didn’t pretend he could ban it by an executive order that flies in the face of constitutional speech protections. C’mon man,” Hume wrote on X.
Critics have questioned the validity of Trump’s executive order, pointing to the 1989 Supreme Court ruling that found flag burning was a legitimate political expression. The late Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative who Trump repeatedly praised, was in the majority on that ruling.
Vice President JD Vance pushed back on the criticism in a Tuesday post on X.
“1) Antonin Scalia was a great Supreme Court Justice and a genuinely kind and decent person. 2) The President’s EO is consistent with Texas v. Johnson. 3) Texas v. Johnson was wrong and William Rehnquist was right,” Vance wrote.
The order the Republican president signed in the Oval Office acknowledged the court’s 5-4 ruling in a case from Texas in 1989, but said there is still room to prosecute flag burning if it “is likely to incite imminent lawless action” or amounts to “fighting words.”
“You burn a flag, you get one year in jail. You don’t get 10 years, you don’t get one month,” Trump said. “You get one year in jail, and it goes on your record, and you will see flag burning stopping immediately.”
The order also called for Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue litigation to challenge the 1989 ruling, an attempt by Trump to get the issue back in front of the Supreme Court. Today’s Supreme Court is much more conservative than the makeup of the court in 1989 and includes three judges Trump appointed in his first term.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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