President Donald Trump‘s Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared on The Katie Miller podcast after the assassination of MAGA advocate and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk.
Note: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, served as communications director for Vice President Mike Pence and as a deputy press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security during the first Trump administration.
Bondi told Miller: “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place [for that], especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society.”
When Miller asked Bondi, “Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups using hate speech and putting cuffs on people, so we show them that some action is better than no action?” Bondi replied: “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, and that’s across the aisle.”
Someone needs to explain to Ms. Bondi that so-called “hate speech,” repulsive though it may be, is protected by the
First Amendment. She should know this. https://t.co/y9UqEjZkeb— Brit Hume (@brithume) September 16, 2025
Conservative Brit Hume, chief political analyst at Fox News, responded to the interview on social media where he wrote: “Someone needs to explain to Ms. Bondi that so-called ‘hate speech,’ repulsive though it may be, is protected by the First Amendment. She should know this.”
Attorney Rich Kelsey, a former assistant dean and law professor at George Mason Law School, agreed with Hume and replied: “This is embarrassing for Ms. Bondi. Free political speech includes the most vile and contemptuous speech. (The exceptions are well noted over history) What people REALLY need to learn is that ‘free speech’ protects individuals from government action (i.e. harassment, censorship, prosecution) Free speech protections do not extend to private action, including employers, boycotts, etc.”
Bondi responded in a long post on social media, essentially saying that, however close the two may sometimes be in practice, it was not her intent to conflate hate speech with hate crimes, which concern violent actions motivated by racial or other prejudicial hatred.
Speech itself stops short of being criminal, she affirmed in answering her critics, though “threats of violence” — as Bondi notes — are not shielded by the Bill of Rights. “Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime,” Bondi wrote on X post attempting to clarify what she intended.
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.
Under 18 U.S.C. §…
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) September 16, 2025