It took less than a week for President Donald Trump’s administration to roll out the worst kind of fanatical overreach following the killing of Charlie Kirk. On Sept. 10, the right-wing culture warrior was gunned down while speaking on the campus of Utah Valley University. And every day since, we have witnessed how quickly a crisis can be transformed into an instrument of repression.
Trump, for his part, has given several indications that he’s ready to move on from headlines dominated by Kirk’s killing. When asked by reporters two days after Kirk’s death to address the meaning of the popular podcaster’s assassination, he bragged about the White House ballroom, which is now under construction. On Sunday he skipped a vigil for Kirk, held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, to golf.
Trump’s administration is now moving full tilt to use his killing, hitting the airwaves in an attempt to manufacture consent for their coming crackdown on civil liberties…But the White House’s rush job is so sloppy that even Trump’s most ardent supporters are crying foul — and it looks as though Attorney General Pam Bondi might take the fall.
The Turning Point USA founder was a major MAGA organizer, and in the wake of Trump’s 2020 election loss, he became one of the loudest “Stop the Steal” voices. So Trump’s administration is now moving full tilt to use his killing, hitting the airwaves in an attempt to manufacture consent for their coming crackdown on civil liberties. (Coincidentally, for the next two weeks, the entire U.S. Constitution, with all its 27 amendments, will be on display at the National Archives for the first time in history.) But the White House’s rush job is so sloppy that even Trump’s most ardent supporters are crying foul — and it looks as though Attorney General Pam Bondi might take the fall.
“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society [for hate speech],” Bondi explained to Katie Miller, the right-wing podcaster and wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, on Monday. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” Kirk, however, argued that “hate speech does not exist legally in America.”
Hours after her conversation with Miller, Bondi appeared on Fox News to announce that the Department of Justice, which reportedly just removed a study showing domestic terrorists are right-wing, is investigating claims that businesses have refused to print Kirk’s picture for vigils. “We can prosecute you for that,” she warned.
As with her claim to have the Epstein files on her desk, Bondi’s rush to feed the Fox News clip mill without facts or evidence as backup has again exploded in her face. Almost immediately, nearly all of MAGA media, from Megyn Kelly to Tucker Carlson, slammed the attorney general’s comments as an affront to free speech.
“Pam Bondi said one of the dumbest things you can say as an attorney general,” Megyn Kelly said on her massively popular podcast Tuesday. “Pam Bondi just said there’s hate speech. That’s a lie,” Tucker Carlson told his podcast audience. “She must think she is the Attorney General of the United Kingdom,” quipped Red State founder Erick Erickson. “Get rid of her. Today,” the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh demanded. On CNN, even the usually loquacious MAGA mouthpiece Scott Jennings struggled to defend her.
In a post on X following the backlash, Bondi attempted to clarify her comments but reiterated her pledge to apply the law with political bias. “You cannot dox a conservative family and think it will be brushed off as ‘free speech,’” she wrote. The attorney general did not define, however, how the federal government defines doxxing.
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While many on the right are patting themselves on the back for rejecting Bondi’s hate speech comments, she is simply saying out loud what others in the administration, from the president on down, have hinted at while using Kirk’s assassination as political cover.
To close out the first episode of Kirk’s podcast since his passing, guest co-host Vice President JD Vance called on Kirk’s followers — whose numbers have reportedly swelled since the shooting — to “put on the full armor of God” and “commit ourselves to that cause which Charlie gave his life.” Vance instructed Republicans to call people’s employers and have them fired if they are saying things about Kirk that his followers find offensive. (Notably, after Trump’s last vice president was threatened with political violence on Jan. 6, the president justified the protesters’ righteous anger and eventually pardoned them.) Vance also named liberal philanthropist George Soros and the Ford Foundation as targets of the federal government, accusing them of funding The Nation magazine, which he had attacked over its criticism of Kirk.
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Trump, of course, made clear he has no concern with principles and sees free speech through the prism of what the issue means for him personally, seemingly confusing people who hate him with hate speech. First, he revealed on Monday that he has instructed Bondi to investigate pro-Palestine protesters who interrupted one of his few public outings in Washington, D.C., last week. ”I’ve asked Pam to look into that because they should be put in jail.” On CNN Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche suggested the protesters could be prosecuted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Then, when Jonathan Karl of ABC News asked Trump on Tuesday about Bondi’s hate speech comments, he responded: “We’ll probably go after people like you…because you treat me so unfairly — it’s hate.” On Monday, Trump announced he was suing the New York Times for $15 billion, which follows lawsuits against the Wall Street Journal and the parent companies of ABC News and CBS News.
MAGA’s response to Kirk’s tragic assassination has been a kind of mask-off moment for the right’s persecution complex. In 2022, Stephen Miller wrote, “If the idea of free speech enrages you — the cornerstone of democratic self-government — then I regret to inform you that you are a fascist.” Ahead of the 2024 election, Elon Musk claimed that “The Democratic Party openly wants to take your freedom of speech under the guise of what THEY deem to be ’hate.’” Shortly after taking office, the vice president stood before European leaders in Munich and warned that free speech was “in retreat” across the West.
By using a national tragedy as a pretext to flip the script and set out to limit protected speech, the Trump administration is echoing patterns seen in darker chapters of world history. MAGA media is trying to throw Pam Bondi under the bus, but it’s clear the plan is much bigger than her.
