The President-elect of the United States of America, a man who once said there's no such thing as being "too greedy," woke up bright and early Tuesday morning to tweet about the popular pastime known as flag burning. Despite the fact that the Constitution does not allow for the government to strip someone of their citizenship against his or her will, Mr. Brexit publicly floated such a concept—in addition to jail timefor anyone who decided to arrange a meeting between fire and flag:
To help us really hone in on the perplexing sense of fear inspired by such a reckless suggestion, Desus and Mero spent a solid two minutes of their highly recommended VICELAND series Tuesday going all the way in on the President-elect's threats. Referring to him as both "President Cheeto" and "the orange President-elect," Desus declared him "easily the worst tweeting president in the history of presidents, and that includes presidents who did not have Twitter."
After Desus explained that the peculiar timing of the flag tweet was eventually traced back to a flag-burning segment aired on alleged news provider Fox News, Mero noted the hypocrisy of such viewing habits. "He got a lot to say about mainstream media, but it looks you watching the same shit we're watching," Mero joked.
So just how out of line is the President-elect's punishment suggestion for flag burners? Completely. As Georgetown University law professor David D. Cole told the New York Times Tuesday, the proposal is "beyond the pale" for a variety of reasons. "To me, it is deeply troubling that the person who is going to become the most powerful government official in the United States doesn't understand the first thing about the First Amendment—which is you can't punish people for expressing dissent—and also doesn't seem to understand that citizenship is a constitutional right that cannot be taken away, period, under any circumstances," Cole said.