Looks Like Trump Has Control Of His Twitter Again

Donald Trump is well-known for his tendency to express himself maybe a little too freely on Twitter. His campaign reportedly removed Trump's access to his account a few days back, according to the New York Times. But based on Trump's latest tweet, he probably has his Twitter account back, and not much about his writing style has changed.

"Just had a very open and successful presidential election," Trump tweeted on Thursday. "Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!" The president-elect was referring to nationwide protests that erupted following his election. While his claims of there being "professional protesters" are unfounded, this tweet makes it clear that even after being elected to America's highest office, the Donald will continue to share his uncensored thoughts over social media.

Trump has addressed his Twitter usage, telling an audience in August that the people who say not to use Twitter are "your enemies," according to Politico. "Why wouldn't I use [Twitter]?" Trump asked his audience rhetorically. "If I have all these millions of people, and it's a great way to get a message out."

Despite what Trump sees as the positives to using Twitter, he's found himself in hot water for his past tweets before. At one point during a debate with Hillary Clinton, he denied having said climate change was a hoax, while Trump had in fact tweeted in 2012, "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." More recently, Twitter users unearthed a series of tweets, also from 2012, in which Trump called the Electoral College "a disaster for a democracy." Interestingly enough, the Electoral College is also the reason Trump was elected president, seeing as Clinton actually won the popular vote.

One of America's cornerstones is the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the right to peaceably assemble. Trump supporters have criticized anti-Trump protesters, saying they aren't respecting "the democratic process," the Chicago Tribune reported. Trump himself called the protests "Very unfair!" But this seems hypocritical considering that Trump exercised his freedom of speech to call the election "rigged" many times, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary. Anti-Trump protesters are well within their rights to demonstrate against him, and the press is free to cover these protests.

For those who say the protests shouldn't be happening because there have been violent incidents associated with some of them, it's important to realize that since Trump's election there has been a wave of hate crimes, some allegedly committed by Trump supporters. There is no excuse for violence, whether you're for Trump or not, but it's flawed logic to blame the actions of a few on the thousands more who have assembled peacefully.

Let's hope Trump remembers that freedom of speech goes both ways the next time he decides to protest something on Twitter. Which, considering past precedent, will probably be soon.