I have to admit that at no point in my life — and particularly at no point in the seven-plus years that Donald Trump has been at or near the center of American politics — did it ever occur to me to compare him to Galileo Galilei.
Yet that is precisely the analogy drawn in a new brief by lawyers arguing for Trump and several other plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Twitter. First reported by Politico, the brief compares Trump’s claims about election fraud with the pushback on one of the central advancements in scientific history. Because, why not?
Lest you think I am exaggerating or overstating the point, here is the pertinent excerpt — centered on Galileo’s early-1600s argument that the Earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa.
“[C]rackpot ideas sometimes turn out to be true. The earth does revolve around the sun, and it was Hunter Biden, not Russian disinformation agents, who dropped off a laptop full of incriminating evidence at a repair shop in Delaware. Galileo spent his remaining days under house arrest for spreading heretical ideas, and thousands of dissidents today are arrested or killed by despotic governments eager to suppress ideas they disapprove of. But this is not the American way. We believe the path to truth is forged by exposing all ideas to opposition, debate, and discussion. Confident in the wisdom of the American people, we believe ideas that survive the gantlet of criticism will flourish and those that don’t will fall by the wayside. E=mc2...
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is in "good health" and suffered only minor injuries during the February 28 strikes, senior Iranian officials said on Friday, dismissing mounting speculation...