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

Sep 16, 2025 - 15:01
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 himselfhas been saying for nearly a decade. They’re just praying we don’t notice.