To support President Donald Trump is to be complicit in the rule of a thin-skinned authoritarian who denigrates the free-speech rights of people who criticize him.

The latest illustration: his weekend outburst against Saturday Night Live, a sketch-comedy show that has regularly poked fun at every American president for 40 years. The most powerful snowflake in America was triggered by Alec Baldwin. “Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!” Trump tweeted. “Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!”

Lest there be any doubt about the implications, Trump tweeted in December 2018, “A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live,” declaring, “It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?”

Trump’s SNL tweets are of a piece with a larger, disturbing pattern of behavior in which he violates his oath to protect and defend the Constitution by calling for First Amendment freedoms to be abridged by bureaucrats and legislators, and by calling the press a public enemy and a target of his “drain the swamp” agenda.