Reince Priebus admits Trump administration has looked into changing the First Amendment

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus admitted during a Sunday morning interview with ABC's Jonathan Karl that the Trump administration has "looked at" a constitutional amendment to free speech protections.

Karl sought to clarify President Trump's tweet that "the failing New York Times has disgraced the media world. Gotten me wrong for two solid years. Change the libel laws?" "That would require, as I understand it, a constitutional amendment," Karl said. "Is he really going to pursue that? Is that something he wants to pursue?"

"I think it's something we've looked at," Priebus replied in the affirmative. "How that gets executed, or whether that goes anywhere, is a different story."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

As Talking Points Memo notes, it was not a slip of the tongue — Priebus repeats that "this is something that is being looked at" later in the interview as well.

"The changes President Trump wants are blocked by decades of jurisprudence which is little contested, unlike other hot button points of constitutional law," writes TPM's Josh Marshall. "If you want what Trump wants, you have to amend the Constitution — and not the Constitution in general but the First Amendment specifically. Amending the First Amendment to allow the head of state to sue people who say things he doesn't like amounts to abolishing it."

Watch the clip below. Jeva Lange