Chris Cuomo: 'Hate Speech Is Excluded from Protection'

CNN host Chris Cuomo is drawing Twitter fire today for this:

it doesn’t. hate speech is excluded from protection. dont just say you love the constitution…read it https://t.co/znZJ8cPvpX

— Chris Cuomo (@ChrisCuomo) May 6, 2015

He then cited the 1942 case Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, in which the Supreme Court upheld the state’s Offensive Conduct law against name-calling — the “fighting words” doctrine.

“@BenK84: Can you cite for me where hate speech is banned in the constitution? Please. Cite the exact text.” Chaplinsky bans fighting words — Chris Cuomo (@ChrisCuomo) May 6, 2015

“@mjkdailyreading: I must have missed Article Chaplinsky in civics class.” Are you that dense? Or do you not get that cases are the measure? — Chris Cuomo (@ChrisCuomo) May 6, 2015

.@amyalkon to march yes. To walk up to you and call you something ugly for being Jewish…then Chaplinsky test. Understand?

— Chris Cuomo (@ChrisCuomo) May 6, 2015

At publication time Cuomo was still tweet-fighting with critics:

.@TheRightWingM even you know it isn’t, but if you won’t because u r a craven bigot, then you may have a legal problem

— Chris Cuomo (@ChrisCuomo) May 6, 2015

Yesterday, Cuomo asked Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on CNN if free speech was being used “as a cover to poke Islam in the eye.”

“Well, first, that’s a little bit of a hard question to answer in that, if we start down the path of thinking if we know something’s going to offend someone, so we should retreat from that, they keep redefining what’s offensive until then all of their rules are applied on all of us in our free world and our western civilization,” King replied.

“So I think we have to push back on this. I don’t think that what they did down there was offensive. I think it was a robust demonstration of freedom of speech. And we have to do that.”

Cuomo also asked the congressman why he was “boosting” Dutch politician Geert Wilders. “He said some things that are pretty ugly about Islam,” the CNN host said. “There’s not breeding any type of cooperation of faiths and moving forward together.”

“I think this country’s not at all educated on what we have for an enemy. And Geert Wilders opens this up for us and forces us to take a deeper look at the people that are coming to kill us as they did in Garland, Texas just Sunday night,” King said.

“Do you believe that America’s future, when it comes to collaboration of cultures, is to pick on one and paint one in the extreme and at its ugliest?” Cuomo also asked.

“You’ve got to know your enemy,” King answered.