Today, the CEO of Macmillan John Sargent sent a memo to his employees (h/t Publisher's Weekly) declaring his company's resistance to the assault by neo-fascist sociopath Donald "Rump" Trump on his company's right to publish Michael Wolff's best seller "Fire and Fury." Here are the two key paragraphs from his memo:
"The president is free to call news “fake” and to blast the media. That goes against convention, but it is not unconstitutional. But a demand to cease and desist publication—a clear effort by the President of the United States to intimidate a publisher into halting publication of an important book on the workings of the government—is an attempt to achieve what is called prior restraint. That is something that no American court would order as it is flagrantly unconstitutional. [snip]
There is no ambiguity here. This is an underlying principle of our democracy. We cannot stand silent. We will not allow any president to achieve by intimidation what our Constitution precludes him or her from achieving in court. We need to respond strongly for Michael Wolff and his book, but also for all authors and all their books, now and in the future. And as citizens we must demand that President Trump understand and abide by the First Amendment of our Constitution." (emphasis added)As to the last point, he'll never understand nor abide by the First Amendment, since he sees himself as America's proprietor. He's violated his oath of office so many times when he's tried to destroy the role the free press under the First Amendment, that he could be impeached for those offenses alone, even before the likely charges of obstruction of justice, abuse of power, perjury, money laundering and conspiring with a hostile foreign power to influence an election.
