U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Trump administration will be “targeting” hate speech, which she differentiated from free speech — and then tried to walk back a day later.
“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech,” Bondi said in an interview with the Katie Miller Podcast that aired Monday, appearing to shrug off First Amendment concerns.
Asked if the Justice Department would be cracking down on groups that engage in such speech, Bondi said, “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 said. “There is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” Bondi said, referring to Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was assassinated on a college campus in Utah last week.
Kirk took the opposite position on such speech in a post on X last year.
“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. Keep America free,” he wrote.
In an interview later Monday with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Bondi said “we all believe in the First Amendment,” but that people who’ve said “horrible things” about Kirk in the days since his murder should be held to account.
“It’s free speech, but you shouldn’t be employed anywhere if you’re going to say that. And employers, you have an obligation to get rid of people. You need to look at people who are saying horrible things, and they shouldn’t be working with you,” she said.
President Donald Trump seemed unconcerned about the remarks when asked about them Tuesday by a reporter for ABC News.
“We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they’ll come after ABC,” Trump said. “Maybe they’ll have to go after you,” he added.
Some of the president’s allies and supporters were critical of Bondi’s comments.
“We don’t need DOJ to prosecute ‘hate speech.’ Pam Bondi really isn’t ready for this moment,” far right commentator Mike Cernovich posted on X.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said, “In America, it’s a very important part of our tradition that — this is a conservative principle, and certainly an American principle — we do not censor and silence disfavored viewpoints. People in America are allowed to say crazy things.”
“That said, if I’m an employer or a government agency and I have someone online who is online celebrating the heinous murder of an innocent young husband and father, I can make the decision that they don’t deserve to work for me,” Johnson added.
Bondi appeared to take a softer stance and attempted to refine her remarks in a lengthy post on X Tuesday morning, saying she was referring to violent threats. She also seemed to suggest in her post such threats only come from one side of the political aisle.
“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 said.
“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.’ These acts are punishable crimes, and every single threat will be met with the full force of the law. Free speech protects ideas, debate, even dissent but it does NOT and will NEVER protect violence.
“It is clear this violent rhetoric is designed to silence others from voicing conservative ideals. We will never be silenced. Not for our families, not for our freedoms, and never for Charlie.”
The level of political violence and threats in the country has surged in recent years, with attacks on Democrats and Republicans alike.
Trump was the target of two assassination attempts during his latest campaign, and he was shot in the ear during one of them. Among Democrats, Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed in what authorities described as a “politically motivated assassination,” while one of her colleagues, state Sen. John Hoffman, survived being shot multiple times by the same gunman.
In her interview with Miller, Bondi struck a broader tone and cited the arson attack on Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home this year.
Miller’s husband, White House adviser Stephen Miller, on Monday called “left-wing political organizations that are promoting violence” a “vast domestic terror movement.”
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” Miller said while appearing with Vice President JD Vance in a special tribute edition of Kirk’s podcast.
“It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name,” he added.