The vast majority of the time, it is true that the remedy to bad speech is more speech, because in the marketplace of ideas, the good will tend to crowd out the bad.

But that isn’t always true.

There are moments when bad speech becomes especially dangerous and, because of temporal and logistical constraints, difficult to counter. There are times when the immediate damage caused by bad speech is so great that we would rather not wait around for the good speech.

Imagine what would happen if, on November 4, Joe Biden has won the election and President Trump tweets something like this:

“Election was RIGGED. I beat Sleepy Joe and the Fake News media knows it. Looking at some very strong responses. Stay tuned!”

I think you will agree that this is not an entirely fanciful possibility.

In the event that this—or something like it—were to happen, President Trump would be triggering a full-blown constitutional crisis on a scale not seen since 1876, one that endangers the peaceful transition of power.