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MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace blasted members of the right celebrating Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter on Tuesday.
After a lucrative offer from Musk, the social media company agreed to sell itself for a deal worth approximately $44 billion. This followed Musk’s original offer back on April 14 as well as Musk’s original 9.2% stock purchase of the company.
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Reporters, columnists, and TV hosts at several media outlets, including MSNBC, shared their displeasure at Musk’s purchase. Many Republicans, however, have applauded the buy based on Musk’s support of free speech.
In a panel, frequent MSNBC guest Donny Deutsch and Wallace called out these conservatives as being deceitful, comparing their form of free speech to yelling fire in a crowded theater.
“You get into the First Amendment discussion where you go back, and you can’t yell fire in a movie theater. What are the ground rules?” Wallace quoted Deutsch during the segment. “And the issue is whether it’s Elon Musk or anybody else, it’s a problem that’s bigger than Elon Musk.”
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“What the right has already seized is this ground they’re on the side of free speech. They’re really not. They’re for the political version of yelling fire in a movie theater,” she continued.
“Yes, they are,” Deutsch replied.
In a 1989 article in the Atlantic Monthly, Harvard Law professor emeritus and constitutional law scholar Alan Dershowitz criticized the use of the “shouting fire” analogy against unpopular political ideas.
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He wrote that these analogies “by their nature, matters of degree. Some are closer to the core example than others. But any attempt to analogize political ideas in a pamphlet, ugly parody in a magazine, offensive movies in a theater, controversial newspaper articles, or any of the other expressions and actions cataloged above to the very different act of shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater is either self-deceptive or self-serving.”