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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Bondi is reminding America why being Trump’s AG is the worst job in
Washington
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated:
11:00 AM EDT, Wed September 17, 2025
Source: CNN
Pam Bondi’s self-inflicted storm over suppressing free speech is
showing yet again that serving as Donald Trump’s attorney general is
an impossible job.
She spent after to crack down on people deemed guilty of hate speech
for celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk and warning of investigations
into office supply firms if they refused to print posters of the
assassinated MAGA hero.
As with her fanning of conspiracy theories , Bondi stumbled by
apparently seeking to please the president’s hardline supporters but
instead inadvertently outraging a good chunk of them.
This may not just be political clumsiness.
To stay in office, Bondi must advance and even get ahead of Trump’s
political whims. She’s being careful not to emulate his confirmed
first-term attorneys general, and , who tried to accommodate Trump but
were doomed when they ultimately thwarted their boss’s impulses.
Her approach may also have a fatal flaw.
By leaning in the opposite direction, Bondi has twice gotten into
trouble by creating expectations on which she could not deliver. In the
Epstein case, she fueled excitement among the base of a massive public
document dump, then reneged on it. On hate speech, she promised a
crackdown that would be a betrayal of conservative ideology — and
more importantly is clearly unconstitutional.
‘There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech’
The attorney general’s zeal to go after hate speech came as the
administration seeks to punish social media users who celebrated the ,
a North Star of Trump’s MAGA movement. No doubt some of this is born
from the trauma that rocked the administration after the shocking
murder a week ago. But it is also a symptom of a White House constantly
grasping for unfettered presidential power to target opponents.
“There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech — and
there’s no place, especially now, especially after what happened to
Charlie, in our society,” Bondi said Monday on a podcast hosted by
former Trump administration aide Katie Miller.
“We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting
anyone with hate speech,” Bondi said. “Anything — and that’s
across the aisle.”
This enraged conservative commentators because it countermanded decades
of campaigning against attempts by liberals to enshrine hate speech in
jurisprudence. Bondi’s comments also contradicted settled Supreme
Court rulings, including , and even Kirk’s own statements on
constitutionally protected speech.
Just as strikingly, Bondi’s apparent willingness to crack down on
free speech flouted the policy of the Trump administration itself.
Hours after swearing to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution
on January 20, Trump signed an executive order on The text accused the
Biden administration of infringing on the constitutionally protected
free speech rights of citizens in its attempts to combat
“misinformation” and “disinformation.”
The order further stated, “Government censorship of speech is
intolerable in a free society.”
Remarkably, in any move to prosecute hate speech in the wake of the
Kirk killing, Bondi would have actively undermined a document that she,
as attorney general, was charged with implementing.
Of course, Trump’s view of free speech is selective and often flouts
an objective interpretation of the Constitution. On the South Lawn of
the White House on Tuesday, he , who’d pointed out that many of the
president’s allies believe hate speech is free speech. “Maybe
they’ll have to go after you,” Trump snapped — in a flagrant
demonstration of a powerful politician threatening the freedom of the
press, another pillar of the First Amendment.
Attempting to defuse the controversy, Bondi told Axios in a Tuesday
statement that was authenticated by CNN, “Freedom of speech is sacred
in our country, and we will never impede upon that right.” She added,
“My intention was to speak about threats of violence that individuals
incite against others.”
Prosecuting violent language aimed at convincing someone to break the
law is less onerous than any attempt to criminalize hate speech. But
it’s also complex, because it involves intent. Whether someone is
actively inciting someone else to break the law can be subjective. Many
critics have accused the president himself of indulging in incitement,
for instance when he told his supporters on January 6, 2021, to
“fight like Hell” before the invasion of the Capitol intended to
thwart the result of a democratic election.
others to commit violent crimes because he had earlier in his speech
urged supporters to march in a “peaceful and patriotic” manner. The
claims were not tested at trial since the federal election interference
case ended when Trump won the 2024 election.
Bondi’s political Achilles’ heel
Bondi might have abandoned hate speech cases after her latest political
tangle. But the administration is nevertheless vowing to that it claims
are financing and encouraging incitement against conservatives. There
is no division inside MAGA on that goal.
She’ll likely be able to overcome any political damage by doubling
down on such a crackdown, even if it brings its own legal and
constitutional concerns.
And so far, there’s no sign she’s testing the patience of Trump and
his team. She got the job as a second choice — after Trump’s first
pick, , withdrew from consideration following a thwarted confirmation
fight colored by allegations of sexual misconduct in an episode that
only added to a sense that the AG’s job in a Trump administration was
cursed.
Bondi was considered a steadier hand than Gaetz. But unlike her
first-term predecessors, she’s not an outsider. She’s in the front
rank of MAGA personalities considered ultra-loyal to the president.
She’s often seen with Trump — for instance in the Oval Office on
Monday. Her obsequious demonstrations of loyalty at Cabinet meetings
epitomize her obliteration of the firewall between the White House and
the Justice Department on behalf of a president who sees the DOJ as a
personal law firm.
And CNN that after going into media exile following criticism of her
handling of the Epstein matter, Bondi had reasserted control of the DOJ
and the FBI and was resuming her regular appearances on conservative
media.
But if Bondi has an Achilles’ heel, it’s in her political touch.
She made the controversy over Trump’s past friendship with Epstein
much worse.
There’s no evidence of wrongdoing by the president related to his
relationship with the late convicted sex offender. But Bondi’s
promise of massive disclosures of Epstein’s files and claim that she
had his client list on her desk gave the scandal new momentum.
Then, when she and FBI Director Kash Patel later released a statement
saying no Epstein client list existed and that no further disclosure
were warranted, they sent conspiracy theories into overdrive and
created a that Trump has yet to extinguish. On Tuesday, for instance,
protesters projected images of the president on outside London, where
he will arrive on Wednesday during .
Bondi’s continued good political standing may depend on the Epstein
matter fading fast. But serving as attorney general for a president as
capricious as Trump will always be taxing.
After all, Sessions and Barr both sought to deliver on the
president’s personal and political goals but still got on the wrong
side of him. Sessions, a former Alabama senator, was an early
ideological soul mate for Trump on the issue of immigration crackdowns.
And Barr doused much of the impact of former special counsel Robert
Mueller’s investigation.
But both men ultimately prioritized the law and the safeguarding of
their personal integrity ahead of appeasing the president. Sessions
never recovered from recusing himself from the Russia investigation.
Barr’s split happened when he said there was no widespread evidence
of election fraud in 2020.
So far, Bondi taking the opposite approach, rarely standing in the way
of a president who believes he has unlimited power. But if her
sometimes-shaky political instincts don’t loosen her grip, a moment
may come, sooner or later, when even she faces the same fateful choice.
Correction: A previous version of this story mistakenly described Alito
as deceased. He currently serves on the US Supreme Court.
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