The Highwire with Del Bigtree - IS PAM BONDI TARGETING FREE SPEECH?

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently made strong remarks about the government targeting individuals accused of hate speech. Hear why, under the First Amendment, even speech many consider offensive or hateful is still protected and why this distinction matters.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Last week we were talking about the assassination of Charlie Kirk and although the investigation is still ongoing, we do have the other conversation that's happening across the United stage and that is the speech, the speech that's happening, whether it be from universities or employees of companies and hospitals or just the general public. And we have our Attorney General Pam Bondi has come out recently in an interview to talk about some of that speech. Take a look. 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.

I don't, I mean, I just had to say this pushes it to the edge for me. It's been something I've been really thinking. I'm glad you're bringing this up. And just right there, I think that is the line. I, first of all, I've never liked this term hate speech. I've always thought we have plenty of laws to handle when someone gets killed or brutally beaten by a group of bad meaning people. I think our laws handle that. Bringing hate speech in, which this happened back when I was like a teenager.

I remember the stories that really started pushing this hate speech agenda. It doesn't make sense to me. I think it is the slippery slope that we find ourselves in the middle in. It's where it can be used against either side on this. And frankly, I don't like the government getting involved over what, you know, what people say, no, you're about to get in this. I'm just saying right up front, unless you're going to convince me otherwise right now, Jeffrey. There's a line.

People are allowed to say the ugliest things in the world here in America. That's what we fight for is your right to be as disgusting as you want to be. Now, do you keep your job? That's another story, but I don't like the government getting involved in here. But go ahead. Right. And thankfully, lots of people on the internet were up in arms about this immediately. No one was kind of mulling this over back and forth.

They were saying, look, this is not right. And going back to the 1960s, there is legal precedent after legal precedent showing that speech, no matter how bad it is, is protected. And there are laws in the books already that just really need to be enforced for violence, for calling for violence, for people, for directed threats and attacks on people. Conspiracy to commit violent, whatever it is. It's all covered. We got it there. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And so let's go to 2017. That was the most recent Supreme Court decision. This is the Washington Post. Supreme Court unanimously reaffirms there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. And this is actually the judge's ruling. This is their opinion.

they said this. The idea that the government may restrict speech expressing ideas that offend strikes at the heart of the First Amendment. Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful. But the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom of it to express the thought that we hate. And that is where it's at. And A.G. Bondi is saying, in light of what happened to Charlie, we should really look at hate speech. Well, here's Charlie Kirk. from 2004, here's an actual ex post that he made about speech. He said this, hate speech does not exist legally in America.

There's ugly speech, there's gross speech, there's evil speech, and all of it is protected by the First Amendment, keep America free. So like you said, employers have the right to fire employees based on their behavior and their speech in public. If it looks bad for the company, and people have the rights boycott companies for what the companies and their employees are saying. We have those rights as Americans, but not. not this government overreach, especially from the federal government. This is how we get to what's happening in the UK. People arrested over memes and Facebook posts or in Canada.

These hate speech laws you're seeing going across that. That's how these things happen. The slippery slope is slick and it's being slipped upon by a lot of governments.