Bulwark Takes - Right-Wing Meltdown Over Pam Bondi’s “Hate Speech” Interview

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Pam Bondi tried to score MAGA points—and instead set off a firestorm on the right. Sam Stein and Will Sommer take on her “hate speech” gaffe, the furious backlash, and what it means for Trump’s attorney general.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey guys, me Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullwark. I'm here with Will Sumner, author of False Flag. We're here to talk about Pam Bondi, who is stepping in it, to say the least. Will, let's set the scene and then you can tell me what the reaction is.

But Pam Bondi, our attorney general, did the rounds yesterday. She was with Donald Trump in the White House. Then she did a couple interviews. One with the Katie Miller podcast, a new podcast. I know you're a devoted listener. Are you a devoted listener? Always. I should be.

you know, I hit the like and subscribe. You really should be. Yeah, I have no excuse. And not at two, not at two time speed, at regular speed. You got to appreciate every word that comes in. Anyway, she goes on the podcast. She's asked about the Charlie Kirk assassination. And honestly, she's just sort of basically summarizing the administration's sort of agitation over what it views as a culture of leftist speech that has led to this moment. I should know, I don't really have really great convincing evidence that that is the case. In fact, we're supposed to get something today from prosecutors in Utah, but this is the line that's taken hold. Anyways, Bondi gets up there and she says, 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. Now, obviously, this is kind of a bullshit legal argument. There is no real distinction between hate speech and, you know, free speech. And people, including the late Charlie Kirk, made that very point. But this has gone over like a turn on the right. Yeah, I mean, this is sort of a classic Pam Bondi moment in that she's sort of saying what everyone else on the right is saying. I mean, she wants revenge.

We're going to crush these liberals. But she has to bungle it in such a way that everyone's like, no, Pam, you dofess. What have you done? You know, and she really can't win. I mean, as far as sort of winning the MAGA base over goes. What are some of the reactions that we've seen so far? Yeah, I mean, basically, we're seeing a lot of fire Pam Bondi. Pam Bondi must resign. Savannah Hernandez, who's a Turning Point USA contributor, which is obviously

relevant here, given that she's talking about Charlie Kirk. She says, you know, they got to get rid of her. Britt Hume said, you know, essentially Pam Bondi has no idea what she's talking about, you know, and I think what's interesting here is that you might have thought conservatives would have been concerned about all the previous post-Charlie Kirk stuff about, you know, we're going to crush dissent, we're going to designate these leftists as foreign as domestic terrorist organizations. But I guess they couldn't really see themselves in those shoes. She couldn't see that happening to them. But putting it into hate speech is like, it is a trigger for them. I mean, because they very much see that as being used against them. And I think that's what

has set people off here. Why do they see it that way? Is that just because they have used the idea that hate speech was, that they were being targeted for his speech during the Biden years, that was such a rallying cry? Yeah. I mean, I think that it's been drummed into them so much that, you know, hate speech is protected under the First Amendment and that they're just used to feeling that liberals are using sort of regular conservative speech calling that hate speech to criminalize it. The other thing I would say here is that

Pamani also really angered people when she said, you know, if you're running an office depot and you don't want to make a Charlie Kirk Memorial sign, we're going to make you make that. And that is like just like that you have to bake a cupcake for the gay wedding thing. No, it's not a cupcake, Will. No one has a

cupcake at their wedding. It's a regular cake. Jesus Christ. Sheik wedding sometimes. Yes, but it is, it was remarkable. It was obviously, like, the analogy was so perfect. It's like they spent so many years arguing that you should not have to force a baker to bake a cake for a gay wedding. Then Pan Body's like, but you do have to print out a poster commemorating Charlie Crick's life if you work at Home Depot. It is true, I would say that this whole notion of hate speech has been a rallying cry for the right. And that the whole idea of Trump's election was that there was going to be some sort of liberation where you can call people, you know,

retarded again and you could like use all the horrible words and epithets you wanted to um and that was true of Elon must too right like if you get canceled for a tweet you posted on an ex we will pay your legal bills right and here we are in this yeah did he actually do that he did he did for one at least one woman who was kind of like a you know new york right wing dime square adjacent woman who got fired uh for you know her tweets her bad tweets and now we're at this place where it's like they're sifting through tweets to try to fire people. Yeah. I mean,

look, they're going to... I mean, it's true, right? Like, that's what they're doing. Oh, literally. Yeah. And, you know, as we've discussed here,

not always just celebrations of the assassination, but sometimes it's just, you know, oh, here's some things Charlie Kirk said that I didn't like and then, you know, you get fired. Right. I want to just go through a couple more of the reactions to Bondi. Then we can just talk about her place in the mag affirmament here. Matt Walsh says there should be social conscious for people who openly celebrate the murder

of an innocent man, but they're obviously should. shouldn't be any legal repercussions for hate speech, which is not even a valid and coherent concept. Then we have Eric Erickson. Our attorney general is apparently a moron. There's free speech and then there is hate speech. No, ma'am, that is not the law. We have Rokana who tags J.D. Vance. So now at J.D. Vance, your administration is prosecuting hate speech, even though you ran on standing for First Amendment and lectured Europe about not censoring hate speech. And then we have Matt Iglesias. This wasn't true when leftist said it and it isn't, it's still not true now that

Mag is saying it. Free speech includes the right to say rude, hateful, disgusting, and inappropriate stuff. Steve Cortez. Pam Bondi must be fired. Hate speech cracked down in the name of Charlie Kirk. Kirk Riley despised hate speech laws. The AG statement is ludicrous. I will note, Bondi tried to clean it up, but she did it by just basically reimagining what she'd said in the first place. She said hate speech that crosses the line to threats of violence is not protected by the First Amendment. It's a crime for far too long. We've watched the radical left normalized threats call for assassinations

and cheer on political violence. That era is over. She bungled it. I mean, she put it in terms, as we said, that they can understand as being used against them. I mean, one guy, not as big a deal as the fellows you're talking about here, but this sort of a maha influencer named Kevin Bass, I thought put it in a funny way where he said,

you know, you can't criminalize hate speech. And that's not even what we want after this assassination. We want purges. We want roundups. You know, I mean, things that are in many ways even more scary. But I think they just, they just see hate speech. Don't even worry about the hate speech. Just jail them.

Just skip the step. So Bondi's been like, I don't know, how would you describe her place in the MAGA universe, right? Like she had this whole thing. I mean, the whole thing. The Epstein file situation was obviously a huge misstep. She's had this clash with Bongino, although they apparently have figured out. a way to coexist. She was only there because Matt Gates couldn't get confirmed, but she does have close

ties to Trump. But what's the general prior to this? Because obviously now people are calling for her to be fired. But prior to this, what was her place in the firmament? I mean, I think she doesn't have a fan base, sort of a dedicated Bondi army in the way that someone like Bongino or Cash does. And I think she's, as you said, I mean, she came in after Gates. So they thought they were going to get Matt Gates.

who's going to rule. And then suddenly they get like sort of this, someone who's very loyal to Trump, but, you know, doesn't offer the base, that kind of payoff that they want. And she's been trying to catch up ever since. And so, you know,

she tried the Epstein Binders thing to try to win over the MAGA influencers that blew up in her face. She said, oh, I got the client list right on my desk. You know, she never produced that. So I think she's, she started in a deficit with the base.

And now she's kind of flailing around trying to win them back, going on the Katie Miller podcast and putting her foot in her mouth. Well, this is what gets me, and I'm sure there's a happy medium between the two polls here, but like, how many times did we see Merrick Garland speak in public during the four years of the Biden administration? Like half dozen. Did he do interviews? Rarely. And if he did him, did he, like, make any news? No. And yet here Bondi's doing like Fox News hits every other night. She's on the Katie Miller podcast. You know, like she is over exposed in a way that we've never seen an attorney general before. And I think there's a reason that Attorney General's try to keep a low profile. It's because everything you say is going to be scrutinized because you are the person that you chief law enforcement officer in the country. So, like, you can't really fuck it up.

You can't say things like this. But that's kind of the requirement for being in this administration is that you have a lot of public interfacing. And maybe that's just because you've got to please the boss. But it does strike me that she's overexposed. The Fox News stuff comes up a lot. I mean, I went to early in this administration, I went to this rally. that was sort of like, why aren't we rounding up the libs outside of the justice department?

And they said, why is Pam Bondi going on Fox News so much? Why is she always in that studio? And so, I mean, I do think, like, some of this is misogyny because, you know, they're not really. There are a lot of people who are doing podcasts and Fox News in the administration, but they really keyed in on her appearances. You think it's misogy because they're just picking her because she's a woman, but she is also, really, because she also is stepping in it. I mean, like, let's be real about it. Like, that's not what she said was really bad. Oh, no, it definitely is, but I think, not this incident in particular, but I think the broader, like, oh, PayPal, you know, you're going on Fox News too much. We got to get rid of you. I think because, look, they're all wandering around, you know, the idea that she's, like, overdoing it compared to others is ridiculous, right? Like, I mean, Stephen Miller's on Fox every night.

Bonino is, you know, do, well, Bongino doesn't do much more. Bonino, well, Bonino was on Megan Kelly yesterday. And it's so bad because, like, they shouldn't be doing this about these investigations. But Megan Kelly will just be like, can you just confirm the roommate's next. name and he goes okay yeah you know he's putting out all this stuff that you know they should not be doing and obviously yeah that's on pan bondi's watch as well yeah well yeah that that's a that is she he reports up to her and so like this whole thing about like flooding the zone with press hits i mean obviously it works because they're elected but it also has real downsides and that you do shit like this and you get in trouble the one other thing i would add about pan bondi is like we also we're talking about how she's kind of out of step with the base but she also sort of is in potentially in trouble with Trump, you know, it was only a month ago that Tulsi Gabbard threw out all

this stuff about the deep state plot against Trump. And, you know, we're going to round up all the Democrats who were involved in investigating him. And then that put a lot in Pambondi's lap. And so now it's kind of her responsibility to deal with that. Sure. But it feels like they're just moving on to the next things. Like they have so many things that they are supposed to be doing. Like, have they taken over Greenland yet? When's that happening? I feel like that one lot. Um, anyways. Okay. Well, we'll see what Pam Bondi, how much longer she has. I think she's fine, but we'll see. We'll move on to the next controversy

after this. Will Summer, author of False Flag. Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it. Hey, happy to be here.