MAGA and conservative influencers torched Attorney General Pam Bondi after she vowed to “target hate speech” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing—something the murdered activist said he did not believe in.
Bondi said her Justice Department would enforce hate speech investigations after the right-wing activist was assassinated.
“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” Bondi said in an interview on The Katie Miller Podcast.
“We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
Kirk himself repeatedly spoke out about the danger of defining and punishing so-called “hate speech.”
“Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” he posted on X last year. “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment.”
A video posted by Decensored News on X compared Bondi’s statement to Kirk’s own words before he died.
Describing himself as a “free speech absolutist,” Kirk told an audience, to applause, “My position is that even hate speech should be completely and totally allowed in our country.
“The most disgusting speech should absolutely be protected.
“As soon as you use the word ‘hate,’ that’s a very subjective term. All of a sudden, it is in the implementation of whoever has the power.”
The blowback from Bondi’s own side was instant and savage. “Our Attorney General is apparently a moron,” conservative host Erick Erickson wrote on X.
“We don’t need gov’t crackdowns on ‘hate speech,’” Rogan O’Handley, who posts as DC Draino, wrote on X. “Let private citizens on X call out abhorrent speech and ask people’s employers if they agree with their statements.”
“What we need is a massive crackdown on trans terror cells, not some ‘hate speech’ police,” the End Wokeness X account, which has nearly 4 million followers, posted. “AG Bondi... yikes.”
The account later posted a “message” to Bondi: A repost of Kirk’s “Hate speech does not exist legally in America” tweet from last year.
Matt Walsh also lit into the attorney general on X, saying, “There is no law against saying hateful things, and there shouldn’t be.”
Bondi’s remark, made in a podcast chat with former White House official Katie Miller, wife of top Trump aide Stephen Miller, landed amid a broader free-speech discussion following Kirk’s Sept. 10 assassination at Utah Valley University.
The Trump White House has framed Kirk’s killing as a left-wing attack on American values, despite a motive from the alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, remaining unclear.
Universities and public employees who made incendiary or mocking comments about Kirk have faced probes and firings, drawing criticism from civil liberties groups concerned about viewpoint-based crackdowns.
Bondi reinforced her message with an X post, again ignoring anything but violence with the right as victims.
“Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime. For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over.”
She added, “You cannot call for someone’s murder. You cannot swat a Member of Congress. You cannot dox a conservative family and think it will be brushed off as ‘free speech.’”
Even as Bondi vowed to go after “hate speech,” senior Trump adviser Peter Navarro demanded Elon Musk ban anonymous users and “foreigners” from his “cesspool” platform X—an idea that flatly collides with traditional free-speech defenses on the right, as reported by Mediaite.
Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and longtime Trump ally, was confirmed by the Senate in February to lead the Justice Department.
