Trump Threatens Reporter When Asked About Bondi’s “Hate Speech” Remark

President Trump has thrown his full support behind his administration’s hypocritical, McCarthyite censorship campaign.

“What do you make of Pam Bondi saying she’s gonna go after hate speech? … A lot of your allies say hate speech is free speech,” a reporter asked Trump on Tuesday as he was about to board his flight to the United Kingdom.

“[We’ll] probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly, it’s hate. You have a lotta hate in your heart,” Trump said, threatening the reporter and mostly ignoring the actual question.

“Would that be appropriate?”

“Maybe they’ll come after ABC. Well ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech. So maybe they’ll have to go after you.”

The president is referring to the lawsuit he filed against ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, after the host said Trump was “liable for rape” while discussing Trump’s E. Jean Carroll case verdict in which he was actually liable for “sexual abuse.” And while a judge even acknowledged that the difference was semantic, ABC settled to avoid any further damage to its Disney ownership, giving Trump a victory in the process.

As for Bondi, she’s been pushing the same disinformation campaign that every conservative seems to be signing on to right now in an effort to take First Amendment rights from anyone they don’t like.

“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,” Bondi told Katie Miller, wife of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, on her podcast on Monday. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

This is a complete about-face that goes against everything the right—and Kirk himself—has been saying for nearly a decade. They’re just praying we don’t notice.

The Trump administration’s censorship campaign has extended to the National Park Service.

The White House has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits documenting American slavery, including a 1863 portrait of an ex-slave, often referred to as either Peter or Gordon, and the thick, variegated whip scars on his “scourged back.” Gordon’s photograph became one of the most widely circulated images of the horrors of U.S. slavery during the abolitionist movement.

The mass information scrub is all in an effort to make the Park Service compliant with Donald Trump’s March executive order that directed the Interior Department to erase any information that could be misconstrued as a “corrosive ideology,” according to four sources that spoke with The Washington Post.

That order has been interpreted by the Parks Service to mean any information relating to racism, sexism, slavery, gay rights, or the persecution of Native Americans, the Post reported Monday night.

Sites affected include Harpers Ferry National Historic Park in West Virginia, where abolitionist John Brown led an unsuccessful raid that eventually led to his capture and the start of the Civil War. Staff at Harpers Ferry flagged more than 30 signs, according to the Post.

Another affected site is the President’s House Site in Philadelphia, where George Washington kept slaves. Exhibits at that location apparently do not comply with the Park Service’s new order, according to sources that spoke with the Post.  

All signage under the department’s purview is subject to review, according to Park Service spokesperson Rachel Pawlitz.

“Interpretive materials that disproportionately emphasize negative aspects of U.S. history or historical figures, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it,” Pawlitz said.

But the White House’s intrusion is historically unprecedented, according to historians.

“This represents an enormous increase in federal power and control over the things we learn,” Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies the history of education, told the Post. “Brought to you by the team that says education should be state and local.”

America’s parks aren’t the only ones undergoing an enormous rescission. Over the course of the summer, the president has wielded a heavy hand in reshaping the Kennedy Center’s programming, and forced the Smithsonian Museum to remove mentions of Trump from its exhibit on impeachments under pressure from the White House. (Those mentions were later reinstated.) 

The administration also issued a memo challenging the application of educational lenses on race, gender, and oppression in U.S. history, and accused the Smithsonian directly of advancing a “divisive, race-centered ideology.” 

Attorney General Pam Bondi is earning scorn—even in the MAGA media ecosystem—for her uninformed claim that the First Amendment has a hate speech exception.

Bondi made the distinction in a Monday appearance on The Katie Miller Podcast, suggesting that hate speech—specifically with regard to the slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk—will “absolutely” be targeted by the Justice Department.

“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,” she said. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything, and that’s across the aisle.

Observers on the right were quick to call out her threat to get the government involved in the reckless doxing campaign MAGA is leading against people accused (often falsely) of glorifying Kirk’s death online.

Many noted that Kirk himself once tweeted, “Hate speech does not exist legally in America.”

“There obviously shouldn’t be any legal repercussions for ‘hate speech,’ which is not even a valid or coherent concept,” wrote podcaster Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire on X—though he said those who celebrate Kirk’s death should face social consequences. “We don’t need Pam Bondi swooping in to throw the entire conversation off the rails by completely missing our point,” he continued. “And having a ‘hate speech’ crackdown in the name of Charlie Kirk—a man who absolutely rejected ‘hate speech’ laws—is especially grotesque.”

Right-wing commentator Savannah Hernandez called Bondi’s sentiment “destructive,” adding, “She needs to be removed as attorney general now.” Talk show host Dave Rubin similarly called for Bondi’s “immediate resignation,” describing her statement as an “unbelievably bad take.” Provocateur Mike Cernovich tweeted that the “hate speech” claim, paired with Bondi’s mishandling of the case of Jeffrey Epstein, shows that the attorney general “really isn’t ready for this moment.”

“Our Attorney General is apparently a moron,” wrote conservative radio host Erick Erickson.

Bondi sought to do damage control Tuesday morning, stating on X, “Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment.”

The GOP has turned so hard on free speech that now even “libertarian” Rand Paul is calling for a “crackdown” on those using their First Amendment rights.

“I was assaulted six, seven years ago, attacked from behind, had six ribs broken and part of my lung removed, and still online, on a daily basis people say they wish that it would happen to me all over again,” Paul said Tuesday on Fox Business. “And by sort of making light of what I suffered, they are encouraging other people to do it. That oughta be taken down, and social media oughta be able to take that down.

“People say, ‘Oh people have a right to say things.’ Well, actually, they don’t necessarily have a right to say things; many people have in their contract what we call a morals clause … or a conduct clause,” Paul continued, as he compared the First Amendment to a military conduct code. “I think it is time for this to be a crackdown on people.”

While it’s ironic to hear a libertarian talk about attacking free speech and civil liberties, that has been all too common in the days following Charlie Kirk’s assassination. People who were haranguing liberals and leftists for policing speech are now going full Big Brother. Vice President JD Vance (who chided all of Europe over free speech in February) said on Monday, “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out, and, hell, call their employer.” Other right-wing ghouls like Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok and Laura Loomer have also been on an intense, often inaccurate doxing campaign of anyone they think is saying bad stuff about a man who made a career off of his own hateful speech. And The Washington Post fired opinion columnist Karen Attiah for expressing very measured opinions about Kirk’s politics.

Republicans are banking on the electorate being too obtuse to notice their obvious hypocrisy. But people like Zeteo’s Medhi Hasan are already noticing, and using Charlie Kirk’s own words to call them out.

“Hate speech does not legally exist in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech,” Kirk said last year on X, as Hasan pointed out. “And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”

A New York state court on Tuesday dismissed all terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione, the 27-year-old accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, with Judge Gregory Carro ruling they were “legally insufficient.”

To meet the definition of terrorism, Carro noted, an action must have the intent to “intimidate and coerce a civilian population.”

But while the prosecution put “great emphasis on [Mangione’s] ‘ideological’ motive,” Carro wrote, ideological belief does not necessarily meet that criteria, despite the prosecution falsely conflating the two.

“There is no indication in the statute that a murder committed for ideological reasons (in this case, the defendant’s apparent desire to draw attention to what he perceived as inequities or greed within the American health care system), fits within the definition of terrorism, without establishing the necessary element of an intent to intimidate or coerce,” Carro ruled.

“While the defendant was clearly expressing an animus toward UHC, and the health care industry generally, it does not follow that his goal was to ‘intimidate and coerce a civilian population,’” and there was “no evidence presented” that he had such a goal, the judge said.

Mangione still faces second-degree murder charges in New York, as well as federal charges and Pennsylvania state charges.

This story has been updated.