Donald Trump’s administration is now embracing the “cancel culture” and assault on free speech he once supposedly ran to subvert.
As MAGAworld mourns one of its most influential figures (and a close friend of many in the White House, including the president’s inner circle), the grief many conservatives are expressing turned to rage over the course of several days after Kirk was murdered on Wednesday at Utah Valley University.
The targets of that rage have increasingly become individual Americans around the country whom the president’s legion of allied influencers, like Laura Loomer, identify as critical of Kirk’s activism in any way, shape or form.
But there’s another Trump insider whose participation in efforts to pursue recrimination against anyone who criticizes Kirk for any one of the racist or derogatory comments he made over the years could have even more significant consequences for Americans: Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Bondi is now in hot water over what some saw as a threat to criminalize dissenting speech and criticism of Kirk, made Monday in response to the furor on the right, which itself is largely in response to Democrats posting evidence of Kirk’s views on race.
The attorney general made her intentions to target “hate speech” clear Monday during a podcast interview: “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything — and that’s across the aisle.”
“You can’t have that hate speech in the world in which we live,” she added on The Katie Miller Podcast, hosted by the wife of White House aide Stephen Miller. "There is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society.”
What was less clear was what new restrictions or enforcement Bondi envisioned. Hate speech, as a concept, is notoriously difficult to define and many experts argue that it is completely protected by the U.S. Constitution, so long as it does not rise to the level of directly inciting or encouraging violent acts. Already this week, the AG has threatened to prosecute an employee at Office Depot for refusing to print flyers for a vigil in Kirk’s honor. The attention around a video posted of the employee refusing the customer led to the employee’s firing.
Stephen Miller, for his part, indicated that the effort would entail suppression of left-leaning political groups on college campuses and elsewhere. Miller and others have begun referring to Democratic-aligned groups as terrorists, alarmingly similar language to the rhetoric that the White House and State Department have now used twice to justify blowing up two Venezuelan vessels it claimed were smuggling drugs to the U.S., killing all onboard.
"We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks," he said on an episode of Kirk’s podcast hosted Monday by Vice President JD Vance.
It also puts the conservative movement in a tricky place, given that the right has typically sided against efforts to expand prosecution of speech and free expression, or to force businesses like internet service providers or content-hosting platforms like X or YouTube to regulate political speech — with some notable exceptions.
That dynamic largely shifted under Trump, and in particular during his second presidency. Clearly angry with years of staunch resistance to his political movement, Trump now frequently brands the entire left side of the American political spectrum as “radical” and “lunatics” and is more resistant to dissent than ever.
The president’s own efforts to clamp down on dissent most recently took the form of an executive order directing Bondi’s agency to prosecute Americans for burning the U.S. flag. Another form of expression that has been clearly defined as protected activity by the Supreme Court, Trump’s campaign is almost certainly doomed to fail, much like Bondi’s supposed efforts to stop “hate speech” through the power of the Department of Justice.
On Tuesday, he suggested outright that Bondi’s campaign could be directed against mainstream media organizations like ABC, CNN, and NBC.
“She'll probably go after people like you because you treat me unfairly. It's hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they'll come after ABC,” he told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl on the White House lawn.
What both of those efforts are more likely to achieve, however, is juicing up momentum behind the efforts of Loomer and other conservatives to go after private citizens with left-leaning views — something the right has accused the left of doing for years.
There are some signs, however, that conservatives outside of the D.C. bubble are less willing to sign up to efforts by the federal government to criminalize “hate speech”. Kirk, himself, was an ardent opponent of such efforts, hindering the White House’s cause.
"Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment,” wrote Kirk in May of 2024.
The reaction to Pam Bondi’s remarks on Monday (which echoed further Miller’s own vow to hunt “terrorists”) was not all positive among conservatives on Elon Musk’s X.
“Pam Bondi is a bigger threat to the United States right now than the blue-haired barista who makes your cold brew at Starbucks, and I stand on that,” wrote one “radical liberty” fan on X.
“If hate speech is a "crime" why isn't Laura Loomer serving a life sentence?” wrote another conservative X user.
Justin Amash, a former GOP congressman with strong libertarian leanings, called on Bondi to resign over the remarks.
“Pam Bondi is now doubling down by conflating “hate speech” with true threats and actual crimes and other acts that aren’t crimes—packaging it all under the label ‘violent rhetoric.’ She is deeply confused and unfit to be the attorney general,” he said.
Facing that backlash on Tuesday, the attorney general issued a statement to Axios, seemingly walking back the administration’s vows to expand the definition of “hate speech”.
"Freedom of speech is sacred in our country, and we will never impede upon that right," Bondi said in her statement. "My intention was to speak about threats of violence that individuals incite against others.”
"Under President Trump, the Department of Justice will be unabashed in our efforts to root out credible, violent threats,” her statement continued. “We will investigate organizations that pursue illegal activities, engage in political violence, violate our civil rights, and commit tax or nonprofit fraud."
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