Debates about free speech and ‘cancel culture’ have been raging in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination as there is a growing list of individuals who have been fired from their jobs in the wake of ghoulish reactions to the murder.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has now entered the chat and taken things a step further – drawing a baffling distinction between what she called “free speech” and “hate speech” and promising the Department of Justice will “target” people accused of the latter.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by the hosts of The Fifth Column – Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch – to discuss Bondi’s troubling comments and what the actual parameters of the First Amendment entail.
Bondi’s Blunder
Bondi is making headlines for a series of eyebrow-raising comments and social media posts she made this week about what kind of speech is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
During an appearance on The Katie Miller Podcast that aired Monday, the attorney general said the DOJ will be “targeting” those who engage in hate speech. “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech,” Bondi said. “And there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie in our society.”
Miller, who is married to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, asked if that could include arrests. “Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech and putting cuffs on people, so we show them that some action is better than no action,” she inquired.
Bondi’s emphatic response surprised many. “We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything,” she said. “And that’s across the aisle.”
Attempted Cleanup
Megyn said the question was shocking enough, let alone Bondi’s answer. “That is not a question that a conservative would ask. I don’t understand what’s happening there,” she noted. “And then for Pam Bondi to not say, ‘Whoa, whoa, sister. We on the right do not crack down on hate speech. We don’t believe in that nonsense. There’s this pesky document called the Constitution that doesn’t allow it, but we don’t even agree with it in principle,’ was kind of extraordinary.”
But she was initially willing to give Bondi the benefit of the doubt, thinking she may have been referring to people who plan or encourage violent events and could potentially be charged as conspirators. “Stephen Miller was talking about how we got to crack down on these groups around people like the assassin who encourage it, or know about, or who are part of it but don’t actually pull the trigger,” Megyn explained. “My supposition on X was maybe she is talking about conspirators… People who are part of the conspiracy but don’t actually do the act but you would need at least one overt act, which would potentially make your speech part of a crime.”
Megyn now believes she “gave her too much credit” because, in an apparent effort to clarify her remarks, Bondi posted a statement on X Tuesday morning that seemingly doubled down. “Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime,” she wrote, in part. “For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over.”
In Megyn’s view, Bondi was trying to “cover for her erroneous statement earlier” and was “[un]willing to admit she totally said the wrong thing as a moral principle, as an American principle, and as a legal principle.”
“That is another dodge because all she needed to write was, ‘Threats of violence are not protected by the First Amendment,’ [then] we are closer to an actual statement of the law. And even [in that case], it takes a lot for a threat to elevate itself into a threat that you can’t actually utter in the United States of America,” Megyn noted. “But prefacing that line with ‘hate speech that crosses the line into threats’ is another f-cked up thing to say.”
Tripling Down
And that wasn’t all Bondi has had to say about free speech. She told Sean Hannity in an interview on Fox News Monday night that employers “have an obligation to get rid of people… who are saying horrible things.”
She referenced a now-viral incident at an Office Depot in Michigan in which a staffer could be heard on video telling a customer who wanted to print flyers for a Charlie Kirk vigil that the store doesn’t “print propaganda.”
“Businesses cannot discriminate,” the AG said. “If you want to go in and print posters with Charlie’s pictures on them for a vigil, you have to let them do that. We can prosecute you for that, but I have Harmeet Dhillon right now in our Civil Rights Unit looking at that, immediately, that Office Depot had done that.”
Office Depot has already fired the employee, and Welch said that is where the story should end. “They took their appropriate action for Office Depot,” he noted. “The federal government is supposed to be enforcing civil rights… That is not a civil rights issue… You don’t have a legal obligation, as a company, to print that flyer.”
“What are we even doing here,” he asked. “Cases like these have been adjudicated at the Supreme Court over and over again. These are 9-0 issues, and they will be 9-0 issues.”
Fireable Offense?
In Welch’s view, Bondi’s comments are disqualifying. “She should be fired. She is the attorney general of the United States. ‘Hate speech’ is not a legal category,” he said. “Your job is as the top law enforcement person in the country, and you’ve just been asked a question about putting people in cuffs to show them a lesson. No, that is not how we do it here.”
Megyn said Bondi “should know better” and promised to “be the first to criticize the Trump administration if it tries to actually crack down on, quote, hate speech,” but she said she doesn’t mind seeing private employers take action.
“I have zero sympathy for the people who are getting fired because of their inhumanity in response to Charlie’s assassination… You celebrate any political assassination? You’re fireable, as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “That doesn’t mean it’s a crime, that doesn’t mean the federal government should get involved. Those losers in the Office Depot… should be publicly shamed, and they should be fired… but they shouldn’t be prosecuted. We have to know where our lines are.”
Moynihan agreed. “If you worked for my company and you were so stupid to put your dumb ideas online for everyone to see… you’d get fired for being that dumb. Not for your speech, just for you being an idiot,” he quipped. “Keep your bad, shitty ideas to yourself or say them over a glass of wine. Don’t say them to everyone online. Are you kidding me?”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with The Fifth Column by tuning in to episode 1,150 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.