Pam Bondi draws fire from conservatives for 'hate speech' comments

Kirby Wilson, Tampa Bay Times on Sep 16, 2025

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U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is drawing criticism from across the political spectrum for comments she made this week about free speech.

In a podcast interview Monday, Bondi promised to crack down on those who practice “hate speech,” connecting that practice with last week’s killing of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

“We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” Bondi told the conservative commentator Katie Miller.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution offers broad protections around speech, including speech that others find distasteful.

Conservatives and liberals alike bashed Bondi for displaying what they said was ignorance of this core tenet of American law.

“Unbelievably bad take by Bondi, worthy of immediate resignation of an Attorney General,” posted Dave Rubin, the Florida-based host of the conservative Rubin Report. “Hate speech does not exist, you can say mean things about people.”

Many noted that Kirk himself contended in a 2024 post to X that “hate speech does not legally exist in America.”

Tuesday morning, Bondi, a native of the Tampa Bay region and the former attorney general of Florida, attempted to clarify her statement. In a lengthy X post, she said she was condemning calls for violence.

“Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime,” Bondi wrote. “For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over.”

When asked about her comments Tuesday, President Donald Trump, who appointed Bondi to lead the U.S. Department of Justice, said news media criticism of himself could be hate speech.

“She’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me unfairly. It’s hate,” he told a reporter for ABC. “You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they’ll come after ABC.”

The flap comes amid a growing crackdown from conservatives on speech in the wake of Kirk’s murder. Online activists and officials have called for the firings of public and private employees who said things found to be offensive in the wake of the shooting.

For example, United Airlines took unspecified action against one of its pilots for posting that “Charlie Kirk was a f--king Nazi and the only good kind of Nazi is a dead Nazi.”

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy celebrated the decision to take the pilot “out of service,” posting: “There’s no room for political violence in America and anyone applauding it will face the consequences.”

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