Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump SUES The New York Times For $15 Billion in Latest Free Speech Meltdown

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer discuss Trump's crackdown on free speech and his new lawsuit against The New York Times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, Dan, the Attorney General says she's going to target you with criminal prosecution if you say things that she and Donald Trump judged to be hateful. And then the president told John Carl of ABC News, who asked about her comments, that he'll probably start with reporters like him who've treated Trump unfairly. Let's start with Pam Bondi. 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. 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. We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything. And that's across the aisle. So I guess, first of all, the only podcast they're all doing now in the White House is each other's. They're all just podcast hosts. I guess they were podcast hosts before the White House, now they're podcast hosts in the White House. So they all just make their news on Katie Miller's podcast or J.D. Vance hosts podcast.

It's just wild. You know what it is? It's a model for the Democrats. Yeah, we're still waiting on that invite. Yeah. I've seen this in different parts. I've seen this on the left here too sometimes, which is like hate speech is constitutionally protected. Yep.

You can not like hate speech. That's why it's hate speech. It is protected by the First Amendment. It is not protected. when you are imminently inciting violence. I don't know how many times I have to say this on this podcast, on this YouTube channel, but it's a good reminder for everybody. Hate speech protected.

Now apparently the President of the United States and the Attorney General don't know that. She's going to do hate speech on both sides. Like this is a... Right, of course. You would really have to work hard. Like, Pam Bondi is, as far as I know, an attorney who went to law school. I mean... And one of the fundamental cases you learn about is the cases involving hate speech and crossburning.

and why it's permitted in every instance other than a specific attempt to intimidate. I learned about the Nazi march and Skokie in middle school, I think. Forget about fucking law school, Dan. Does she have any kind of education? Was it just all just, did she get like an online certificate? Well, look, I think we should be fair. These folks, they ran for office on a platform of cancer culture and censorship. They repeatedly went out there and said that free speech was too broad or right and need to be restricted.

And now they're just delivering what the American people voted for. The vice president, like, went to Europe just a couple months ago to give a speech shaming the Europeans for restricting free speech. Like, he told them, he's like, people are, you got people from the government now are going to be knocking on your doors for bad tweets. Now they're doing, they're just announcing that they want to do this. Yeah, I would say there's a modicum of hypocrisy here. And I think it does, this was true.

This was true from the very, very beginning, right? This is when Elon must have took over Twitter. This is all the free speech warriors. This is the kids' culture bullshit. It is about letting us the right say whatever we want to say, no matter how offensive, no terrible. No matter in anywhere we want to say it, every social media platform, that is the most important thing here. And then once people say things that we don't like, then we don't want those people to say those things. It's even worse because that entire debate was about content moderation policies that private companies choose to implement.

Right, which is not free speech as understood by the First Amendment. Right. The First Amendment is specifically the government cannot do anything to stand in the way of your free speech, not private company. So that was this whole different debate. Now the government is saying we're going to go after free speech. Just, yeah. And then there's, well, hate speech. Well, violent hate speech.

Okay. So president was asked about this by ABC's John Carl before he, uh, before he, uh, left Washington today, and of course, he took the opportunity to correct Pam Bondi, right? Let's listen. That'll come to a vote, but we'll see what happened. And what do you make Pam Bondi saying she's going to go after hate speech? Is that, I mean, a lot of your allies say hate speech is free speech. You 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. Well, ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech. You're a company paid me $16 million for a former hate speech. So maybe they'll have to go after you. Go ahead, Dan. You want to take this one?

That's a well-reasoned legal argument from Trump who definitely understands what the words hate speech means in a constitutional context. Hope ABC thinks they got their money worth. The money's worth, huh? Yeah, really just, you know, look, in fairness, ABC, there's like, look, if you placate a bully or a dictator, it usually works out in your favor. Yeah, what did they get? $15 million? What did they get for that? It's weird.

They got Donald Trump telling one of their reporters to his face that he's going to come after him because he's got hate in his heart. Look, he, he, ABC gave them a cudgel to beat up every ABC reporter for the rest of this term. And they get to fund the fake news wing of the Trump Library one day. Not for nothing. The president also slapped a lawsuit on the New York Times this morning. We got a, we got a story about that in CNN. 15 billion dollars he's suing the New York Times for. The reason he's suing them is because he is mad at them because they did not adequately celebrate his success.

It said the book written by a couple of New York Times reporters about Donald Trump's business empire and how he became so rich, tried to tarnish one of his, quote, most well-known successes as a reality television star. According to the lawsuit, the book inaccurately stated that Mark Burnett, the executive producer of the Appropriet, had discovered Mr. Trump and transformed him into a celebrity. But the lawsuit claims Mr. Trump was already a mega celebrity in an enormous success in business when he was put on the show. They're also upset that the editorial board endorsed Kamala Harris. These are, of course, easily provable defamation claims. It's just, it is, what these lawsuits really are just a true window into the deep, bottom.

whole of insecurity that is Donald Trump. Like, could you imagine your president of United States, you have made billions of dollars in potentially extra legal crypto schemes over the last couple months here? You're on top of the world. Your opponents are divided and depressed. And you were concerned about one line in a New York Times, at a book read by New York Times authors from a few years ago, which claimed that you were discovered by Mark Burnett. That, like, that is something that you felt the need to sue them for $15 billion for

today in the middle of everything else is going on in the world. Yes. And I think this is important because there are different motivations that are driving the President of the United States and some of his most senior aides. Stephen Miller, J.D. Vance, they're like fairly open that their project is trying to redefine what it means to be an American so that it is not in line with the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. They're very clear about that. They see a different kind of America where they get to decide who belongs and who doesn't. Donald Trump is just a bottomless well of need.

That's it. He's just, it's just grudges all the way down, just insecurity all the way down. And so he's operating there. Do both of those things combine? Yeah, they do. But we should note that they are different. Yeah, it's the right is weaponizing Trump's grievance to push a broader crackdown on the left and push for essentially MAGA control of as much power as humanly possible.

So a lot of the MAGA influencers today have been out fairly angry with Pam Bondi over her comments. Like people like Matt Walsh, Megan Kelly, all these people are now criticizing Pam Bondi, which is notable since they are not criticizing Donald Trump, who is saying the same thing. Pam Bondi had like a bit of a cleanup tweet this morning. She said, hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is not protected by the First Amendment. It's a crime. Under, you know, certain laws, it is a federalable crime to transmit any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another. Likewise, it's a, it's a felony to threaten public officials, members of

Congress or their families. You can't call for someone's murder. You can't swat a member of Congress. You can't docks 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 law. I didn't read this. you say docks a conservative family? Yeah. Just to be very clear, there are other doxing. No, you can only dox a conservative family.

Yeah, okay. So fine, Pam Bondi, but that's not what you said. I realize there are statutes. The statutes are not saying that hate speech is a federal offense. But also, this is not just a misunderstanding of law from Pam Bondi. It is that, but it's much more because the speech that everyone is so upset, everyone is so upset about on the right is causing them to crack down on people to, I would say, docks people online to their employers, but not conservative, so therefore, I guess legal, to try to get everyone fires.

It has Pete Hanks at the Secretary of Defense asking members of the public to dime out active duty troops who may have said something about Charlie Kirk. The vice president of the United States is asking people to call the employers of people who posted things about Charlie Kirk. And these are not threats to people. This is none of the things on Pam Bonney's list. It is people who not just celebrate Charlie Kirk's death, which is I find to be a gross opinion, but it is a constitutionally protected one for sure.

But also criticizing Charlie Kirk. Yeah. Now it's just quotes. Just quotes, quotes from Charlie Kirk. Yeah. That can get you fired from the Washington Post. That can get you lose your job. And what they're doing here is they're trying to create a cultural.

of fear because if you're afraid to say anything about Charlie Kirk, you're next, you're going to be afraid to something about Donald Trump. Yeah. Right. That's what they want. And you could, the speed at which these employers are firing people, particularly universities, it just speaks to how afraid they are, everyone is of getting on the wrong side of the governmental power of Donald Trump in this moment or the cultural power of the MAGA

movement. Right. Like these are the personal opinions of employees, right? Now, share it in the private capacity. Now, a private employer, you have the right to fire someone if you think it has done reputational damage or whatever else to your company. But the speed at which they're doing it is they are trying to avoid getting on the wrong side of Trump. And that's the culture of fear that they very, very much want to use this moment to implement. All right.

Last clip by Governor Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania, give a big speech about all of this today. Let's listen. We need to create more opportunities for peaceful and respectful dialogue. respecting each other's fundamental rights as Americans. Censorship, using the long arm of government to silence people, to silence businesses and nonprofits, and restrict their right to free speech, well, that will not solve this problem. Prosecuting, constitutionally protected speech will only further erode our freedoms

and deepen the mistrust. that is un-American. There is a better way. There is a better way. Excited to find out what the better way is. This is tune in next time. Subscribe if you want to get it. Deliver directly to your feed.

What do you think of Shapiro's speech from what you've seen? I mean, good. I mean, this is, I mean, I think. I mean, it's hard to say because a lot of these things, you know, I haven't seen the whole speech, so I'm only going on the clips I've seen, sort of feel like they're missing the moment. Like everything he said is true and right. We need a better way. We need more.

We need less political violence. We need more unity. All those things are true. But you have to talk about those things in the context of the moment we are in. Not just in a moment right after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but in a world in which you have a right-wing authoritarian government using the power of government to go after anyone and everyone who opposes them. Right.

Like that is the core context here. Right? This is not, this is, you know, and maybe he does get to this. I don't want to be, I don't want to criticize what I haven't seen the whole thing. But it, like there isn't a massive asymmetry here. Like we are comparing people like college students not wanting to hear from conservatives on campus to the Department of Justice pledging to prosecute anyone who says things they disagree with, right, or cracking down on political opposition groups. Those are two very, very different things. Well, and I also think, again, for Democrats or for anyone who opposes Donald Trump's guns. government right now and everything he's doing. It is not about necessarily, like we are trying to have a conversation about how to defeat the MAGA movement and Donald Trump, right, and whoever comes next or whatever he's doing. We want to oppose it. And the conversation needs to be, here is the movement, here is his government, here is what he's done, here are the actions he's taken. We don't even put a lot of spin on the ball here and then have a discussion about what is the best way to oppose that. And there are plenty of conversations to be had in that

context within the broad left of center coalition, center right to far left coalition, you know, what are the right tactics strategies, what is good to do, what is unhelpful to do. But like, you got to, you do have to start with the emergency that we're in, right. Yeah, yeah. Just you have to be specific about who's doing what. Yeah. And it's not about equivalence or like, oh, my side did more, your side did me. It's not really about that.

Like, that's not what we're trying to do here. It's like, let's be clear right about what's happening and then figure out how to, How to beat out. All right. Well, everyone, please subscribe to the Potsave America YouTube while you can. While it's still legal in this country. Before it shut down for hate speech. We're having a going out of business sale.

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