Politicians and anti-social media

An appeals court has ruled that the President of the United States has less rights, in at least one respect, than ordinary citizens. The court ruled that President Trump violated the First Amendment whenever he blocked Twitter users from commenting on his own account. While you or I might block a troll from defacing our own accounts with obnoxious comments, the court holds that the President's account has an official, public character -- he sometimes uses it for the first announcement of new policies, for example -- and thus should be a public forum, with no restrictions, apart from those imposed by Twitter itself, on other users' ability to comment. This is not the first such ruling against a politician, and it certainly won't be the last judicial opinion on the subject, since the Justice Department plans to appeal. I suspect that the appeals process ultimately will deliver Trump a favorable ruling, and not just because the Supreme Court has a Republican majority. While I sympathize with the thinking behind this latest ruling, I'm not sure it can withstand constitutional scrutiny. It's widely understood that the current President uses Twitter as his primary medium of direct communication with his supporters. His account is widely perceived as a propaganda platform. It's obviously feared that, by blocking critics, Trump can create an illusion of overwhelming if not unanimous agreement with his opinions and policies. Civil libertarians may think that a public official, when expressing opinions ex cathedra, as it were, has no more right to block critics from posting comments than the President has to drive peaceful protesters from the White House fence. They may insist that Twitter is actually the most direct and peaceful way for dissidents to get in the President's face. But none of this necessarily explains why the President, or any other elected official, should have less right to block people than anyone else. If that proposition depends entirely on the idea that the President's Twitter account is official, then it has to be explained what makes it so. Trump's account predates his presidency; it was not assigned to him after his election. He has issued no executive order making it "official;" nor has Congress. It may be nothing but a propaganda platform, but in this country propaganda itself has rights. The President has no more obligation to grant "equal time" on his account to his opponents than he would to reserve part of the time his campaign committee buys for advertising for opposing points of view.  In short, politicians have as much right to use their social media accounts to make themselves look popular as private citizens have. This, I suspect, is how the ultimate court will rule, but such a ruling will fall well short of silencing the President's critics. If they still want to get in Trump's face, or in the faces of his fans, there are any number of hashtags that can be employed to get their attention -- and it wouldn't surprise me if Trump himself checks all of them.