President Trump’s executive order to “combat desecration of the American flag” is drawing objections from all quarters. In their rush to defend flag burning on First Amendment grounds, they’re not reading the fine print, overlooking the power of this emotional issue and the political trap the president has hidden in plain sight.

Dozens of headlines reported that Monday’s order “banned flag burning,” gobbling up the cheese Mr. Trump used as bait. A close reading finds he targets only cases where the act violates other laws. If a flag is torched to, say, burn down a federal building, it could be prosecuted as arson.

Mr. Trump is not, as was implied, rounding up flag burners. He ordered only Attorney General Pam Bondi, “to the maximum extent permitted by the Constitution … vigorously prosecute those who violate our laws in ways that involve desecrating the American Flag.” 

Ms. Bondi will also “pursue litigation to clarify the scope of the First Amendment exceptions in this area.” These include acts “that violate applicable, content-neutral laws.” In other words, burning a flag at an anti-government protest is as permissible as it was before Monday.

The possible statutes that could be invoked “include,” the order said, “violent crimes; hate crimes, illegal discrimination against American citizens, or other violations of Americans’ civil rights.” Also listed were “crimes against property and the peace,” and incidents that “incite violence and riot.”

The Supreme Court, Mr. Trump’s order noted, “has never held that American Flag desecration conducted in a manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action or that is an action amounting to ‘fighting words’ is constitutionally protected.”

Conservatives, who accepted reports alleging that Mr. Trump had signed a total ban, missed these distinctions. One syndicated radio host, Jesse Kelly, called the order “garbage” on X, and said the president “has me as close as I’ll ever be to lighting” a flag “on fire. … And if I ever feel like torching one, I will.” He’s free to do so, provided he breaks no other law.

The Fox News chief political analyst, Brit Hume, said on X that President George H.W. Bush “called for a constitutional amendment to ban” flag burning in 1988. “He didn’t pretend he could ban it by an executive order that flies in the face of constitutional speech protections.” Nor did Mr. Trump.

Another conservative, Dana Loesch, called flag burning “vile” on X, but said “the government has no right to control speech or expression,” which the order doesn’t do, either. A Red State columnist, Bonchie — the writer’s pseudonym — tweeted opposition to signing “unconstitutional executive orders for show.”

A comment by Mr. Trump at the Oval Office ceremony delivering the order fueled these misimpressions. “If you burn a flag,” he said, “you get one year in jail; no early exits, no nothing.” The paper under his pen created no such statute, though, taking care to stay within constitutional bounds.

Cases resulting from Mr. Trump’s order may even prompt the Nine to revisit its five-to-four ruling in 1989’s Texas v. Johnson. In that case, Gregory Lee Johnson of the Communist Party USA had his conviction for burning a flag outside the 1984 GOP Convention at Houston overturned on First Amendment grounds.

One conservative radio host, Erick Erickson, saw Mr. Trump’s gambit. Although writing on X that he believes “the president’s executive order on flag burning isn’t legal,” he noted that “it will get the Democrats to all go out and burn American flags, yet again putting them on the 20 percent side of an 80-20 issue.”

It’s a safe bet that leftist reactionaries will do whatever Mr. Trump forbids. When those fiery images emerge, they’ll enrage patriotic Americans of all stripes like offensive speech often does. They’ll disagree with what is being said even as they defend the right to say it.

Mr. Trump has gotten the commentariat to focus only on his full-throated defense of the flag, ignoring that, in print, he’s fulfilling his oath to “protect and defend the Constitution.” It’s a trap baited with cheese that some of the president’s supporters don’t see and that his opponents may be unable to resist.