00:00Attorney General Pam Bondi facing backlash from both sides of the aisle
00:04over her comments that the Department of Justice will absolutely target anyone engaging in hate
00:12speech. She made those comments in a podcast interview with Katie Miller, wife of President
00:18Trump's top advisor, Stephen Miller, adding, quote, there's free speech and then there's hate
00:23speech. Bondi later tried to clarify her comments, writing on social media, quote,
00:29hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is not protected by the First Amendment.
00:35It's a crime. Many conservatives continue to push back, including Fox News analyst Brit Hume,
00:42who wrote someone needs to needs to explain to Miss Bondi that so-called hate speech, repulsive
00:49though it may be, is protected by the First Amendment. She should know this. House Speaker
00:57Mike Johnson also weighed in, saying in part, quote, we did not, we do not censor and silence
01:02disfavored viewpoints. People in America are allowed to say crazy things. The late Charlie
01:10Kirk himself posted last year, quote, hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly
01:16speech, there's gross speech, there's evil speech, and all of it is protected by the First Amendment.
01:25President Trump was asked about Bondi's remarks yesterday by ABC's Jonathan Karl.
01:32And what do you think Pam Bondi is saying she's going to go after hate speech? Is that,
01:38I mean, a lot of people, a lot of your allies say hate speech is free speech.
01:41She'd probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly. It's hate.
01:45You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they'll come after ABC. Well, ABC paid me $16
01:51million recently for a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate
01:58speech. So maybe they'll have to go after you. Look, we want everything to be fair. It hasn't been
02:04fair. And the radical left has done tremendous damage to the country, but we're fixing it. We have
02:09right now the hottest country anywhere in the world. And remember, one year ago, our country was dead.
02:17And now Washington D.C. is fixed, and I fix it. The mayor was fine. The mayor was just fine, okay?
02:27The mayor had the sick city for many years. He's been mayor for many years. The one that fixed it was
02:33me and my people. And it is so safe. You should take your beautiful wife tonight and have dinner
02:39down there. You won't be shot. You won't be accosted. You won't even be looked at incorrectly
02:44by anybody. So, Willie, there's so much to sort through there. First of all, Donald Trump goes from
02:51sort of this stream of consciousness situation where he goes from sort of WWF fighter mode to
03:00Mar-a-Lago concierge. You should take your beautiful wife down out. He knows John Carl. He
03:07knows John. He's the first person who's ever said that John Carl's heart is filled with hatred. He
03:14knows it's not. He knows John Carl and likes John Carl. But this is what happens in a day's time. You
03:25have an attorney general who says, I'm going after people who say things that we don't like,
03:31that we call hate speech. When prodded along by the interviewee saying, hey, when do we start
03:38putting handcuffs on people for saying things that they think are hatred? And you see how quickly
03:44this is, this is the most extreme version of, and I know Claire will talk to this too, about what our
03:49law professors talked about when they warned us of a quote, slippery slope, that this was a slip and
03:55slide. And that was like going down from like Mount Kilimanjaro. It went very quickly from a stupid
04:00thing. An attorney general said to a stupid thing that a president said, uh, to, to, to, to all,
04:06to, to the very things, Willie, that we have heard people on the far right push back on for years,
04:14the very things they hated, they have now become, I mean, Elon Musk, the free speech absolutist.
04:21Remember, we need to let everybody say the most offensive, horrible, dangerous things basically
04:28online. And we have to do it, uh, because we're free speech champions. Those old Twitter people
04:35weren't. And of course, the free press who I commend them for actually coming out and going,
04:40wait a second, guys, this is what we've been warning against. And think about all of the battles
04:45on college campuses. What were those battles about speech codes, politically protected speech,
04:53like my God. I mean, it's, it is Willie. You, you said it, you said it yesterday in so many ways,
05:00these people are doing the very thing they have been campaigning and screaming
05:05against for a decade now. It's amazing. Weaponization of government. They're talking
05:10now about going after organizations. They view as leftist. They view as funding left wing. We're
05:16going to use the government to go after that cancel culture. We're going to go through and find people
05:21who said the wrong thing about Charlie Kirk's murder and report them to their bosses and get them fired.
05:26And then free speech, of course, being the biggest one there that now we're going to consider
05:31hate speech somewhere outside the First Amendment under Pam Bondi. And Claire, it goes without
05:36saying the president didn't answer the question there because there's not a good answer to it. I
05:40mean, there is an easy answer, but there's not a good one when your AG is out there saying that hate
05:44speech is different from what's protected under the First Amendment. Somehow he got from a question
05:49about free speech to Jonathan Karl's dinner plans in D.C. last night. But everything we've seen
05:56since the awful, grotesque assassination of Charlie Kirk in terms of how this administration has begun
06:03to use it now as a lever of power, what do you make of it? Yeah, you know, it's interesting because
06:09you all have been talking about that this was a moment, this horrific act of violence that was
06:17motivated by everything that should never motivate someone to kill another person. It's pretty obvious
06:25that's a moment. And you know, when you're a leader, there's an instinct that kicks in that
06:31should kick in. Okay, this is a moment that I am supposed to lead. This is a moment where 99% of
06:38the country is in agreement. And I can step out in front of that and bring down the temperature
06:44and do a lot to repair my image with people that are very skeptical in this country. That's what should
06:51have happened after this horrific act of violence. That's what the president should have done. When
06:57he got that question, that instinct should have kicked in and he should have walked Pam Bondi's
07:03comment back. We are upset right now because of what happened to Charlie Kirk and the Attorney General
07:10was feeling that and she said something that is being misinterpreted. We are not going to censor
07:17our opponents. And Pam Biondi, look what she's done within the MAGA movement. First,
07:23we've got Epstein, where she said, I've got the list on my desk. Then she trashes the legacy of Charlie
07:30Kirk. If Charlie Cook said, I want a legacy, he probably would have said free speech. Right. He
07:36would have said, I want it to be that you can go out and say whatever you want to say. And in America,
07:42there are no handcuffs. And instead, what Pam Biondi does is she trashes that legacy and threatens
07:49cuffs for anybody who says anything that they disagree with. And urges that people be fired
07:57if they say things that are seen as inappropriate. Yeah. So I just think when Trump got that question
08:03yesterday, it's what you would think for anybody who is a normal political leader,
08:08it would be a softball right over the plate that he could take and turn into a situation where he
08:17would be admired even by those who don't like him. And he can't do that. His instincts are so wired
08:24to I'm the best, I'm the one, I'm the only one, and everyone else besides me sucks. And that's what
08:34his instincts are. And it is a terrible instinct for president of the United States. And we see it
08:40every day and many different things he does. And this is a good example. And still.
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