The right’s free speech defenders declare war on First Amendment over Charlie Kirk murder reactions
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.
