In a campaign season when civil discourse seems headed to another record low, rhetorical excess has just been given a little extra boost.
For three decades Tennessee has made it a minor crime to put knowingly false statements about a candidate in oppositional campaign literature — one of the more explicit restrictions on political speech in the nation's law books. But last week a state judge said it was a bridge way too far over the First Amendment.
A prominent democracy reform group, Tennesseans for Sensible Election Laws, sued and won the right to declare in print something hyperbolic in the extreme: That a Republican state legislator is "literally Hitler," the Nazi fuhrer who died in Germany three-quarters of a century ago.
The point, the group said, was to produce a campaign flyer with obviously false assertions in order to test the law, which it says has been unconstitutionally stifling properly provocative satire and criticism of state officials.
"The framers of our Constitution believed that robust public speech and debate would be essential to self-government," it said. "This law tried to put its thumb on the scale, favoring the very people who enacted it — Tennessee state lawmakers — to the detriment of members of the voting public."
Judge Ellen Hobbs Lyle of Nashville agreed last week, declaring the law a violation of both the state and federal Constitutions. Its main flaw, she said, was that it punished false speech against a candidate but does nothing to rein in lies in support of a politician, "viewpoint dicrimination" not permitted by the First Amendment. She also said government regulators should not be in the business of distinguishing truth from falsity — and that the law bans far more speech than Tennessee could ever punish, besides.
"For emphatic and memorable communication in its campaign materials opposing candidates, the plaintiff uses the literary device of knowingly stating a literally false statement about a candidate in the context of satire, parody and hyperbole," the judge said in her nine-page ruling, and that's one of the Sensible Election Laws group's free speech rights.
The organization was taking on state Rep. Bruce Griffey, a Republican whose first term has been marked by proposing a wave of controversial, conservartuive culture war measures, including a ban on refugee resettlement in Tennessee and a requirement that students use school bathrooms that correspond with their sex at birth. And in January, he proposed a bill that would authorize the state to chemically castrate some people convicted of sex offenses against minors — a policy in place in at least seven states.
The good government group tweeted it would begin distributing its leaflets, which say "Bruce Griffey is LITERALLY HITLER" at the top and, underneath that, "Bruce Griffey: an agenda the Nazis would love."
The 1989 law makes it a misdemeanor punishable by a $50 fine and 10 days in jail to distribute "campaign literature in opposition to any candidate in an election" if any "statement charge, allegation, or other matter contained therein with respect to such candidate is false." It makes no exceptions for satire, hyperbole or parody.
The state attorney general's office has not announced whether it will appeal.
Griffey is solidly favored to win a second term in November in a rural district west of Nashville.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.