Key Words: Ben Sasse asks if Trump is ‘recanting’ oath to protect First Amendment http://ift.tt/2qU6h2Z

‘Mr. President: Words spoken by the president of the United States matter …’

Sen. Ben Sasse

Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, used his personal Twitter account Wednesday night to ask Donald Trump whether the latter’s recent comments against the press meant that the president was “recanting” his oath to protect the First Amendment.

Sasse’s response came after Trump seemed to challenge the freedom of the press, by some accounts, and at minimum to escalate his fairly regular White House complaint about “fake news.”

Trump blasted NBC News

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in particular for airing a report that he called “pure fiction” about his seeking a tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

In spoken comments to reporters Wednesday, Trump said it was “frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write.” Asked if he’d limit what the press can write, he replied that the media should report “more honestly.”

The NBC report further said that it was after Trump made the nuclear-arsenal comment that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called him a “moron.” While staffers have downplayed Tillerson’s remarks, Tillerson did not deny having made that characterization of Trump.

While the president wondered whether network licenses should be challenged, or even revoked, he said he wasn’t asking for restrictions on the press. “I’ve seen tremendously dishonest press,” he said.

The president raised the licensing question yet again in an evening tweet.

A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released earlier in October found that 48% of the Americans have either a “great deal” or “some confidence” in the press, up from 39% last November.

Sasse wasn’t the only lawmaker to speak up on First Amendment rights after Trump’s comments — at least when prompted by the press to share a viewpoint on the subject.

House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters Thursday, “I don’t always agree and like what you guys write, but you have a right to do it. And I’m a constitutional conservative, and I’m just going to leave it at that.”

Celebrity Twitter, meanwhile, offered this comparison: