Q&A: Floyd Abrams on the battle for the soul of the First Amendment

A Q&A with attorney Floyd Abrams, who represented the New York Times in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case and went on to become America's leading First Amendment litigator.

Asked, "Shortly after the election, you said Donald Trump 'may be the greatest threat to the First Amendment since the passage of the Sedition Act of 1798.' Why is he a threat?" Abrams responded, "I don’t think we’ve had anyone who ran for the presidency in a manner which suggested the level of hostility to the press than did Donald Trump. And we certainly haven’t had any president who has made as a central element of his presentation while in office a critique of such venom and threat as we’ve heard in the last month. Now, we don’t know how much is talk and what if anything he may do as president apart from the impact of his words. That in and of itself is important. Any effort to delegitimize the press as a whole and any recitation of statements such the one just a few days ago, saying that the press “is the enemy of the American people,” itself raises serious issues even if he never took any legal steps against the press. Words matter. And the words of the president matter particularly. So a president that basically tells the people that the press is its enemy is engaged in a serious—and deliberately serious—threat to the legitimacy of the press and the role it plays in American society."