← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:01]
A
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- [00:53]
B
Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark. I'm here with Will Sommer, author of False Flag. We're here to talk about Pam Bondi, who's. Who is stepping in it, to say the least. Will, let's set the scene and then you could 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. New podcast. I know you're a devoted listener. Are you a devoted listener?
- [01:20]
C
Always. I, I should be. You know, I, I hit the like and subscribe.
- [01:23]
B
You really should be.
- [01:25]
C
Yeah, I, I have no excuse.
- [01:26]
B
Not at two, not at two times speed, at regular speed. You gotta appreciate every word that comes in. Anyway, she goes in 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 note we 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.
- [02:04]
D
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 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.
- [02:35]
B
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 turd on the right.
- [02:52]
C
Yeah, I mean, this is sort of a classic Pam Bondi mom 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 I was like, no, Pam, you do this. 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.
- [03:12]
B
Are some of the reactions that we've seen so far?
- [03:15]
C
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, again, that she's talking about Charlie Kirk. She says, you know, they got to get rid of her. Brit 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, couldn't see that happening to them. But putting it into hate speech is like. 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.
- [03:58]
B
Why do they see it that way? Is that just because they have used the idea that hate speech was that they're being targeted for hate speech during the Biden years, that was such a rallying cry.
- [04:08]
C
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. And the other thing I would say here is that Pam money 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.
- [04:36]
B
No, it's not a cupcake, Will. No one has a cupcake at their wedding. It's a regular cake. Jesus Christ.
- [04:42]
C
Chic wedding sometimes.
- [04:46]
B
Yes, but it is. It was remarkable. The first. It just. 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 make a cake for a gay wedding. Then Pam bodies like. But you do have to print out a poster commemorating Charlie Kirk'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, again, and, And. And you could, like, use all the horrible words and epithets you wanted to. And that was true of Elon Musk, too. Right. Like, if you get canceled for a tweet you posted on X, we will pay your legal bills. Right. And here we are.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Did he actually do that?
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C
He did. He did for one, at least one woman who was kind of like, you know, New York, right wing, Dime square adjacent woman who got fired for, you.
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B
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.
- [05:47]
C
Yeah, I mean, look, they're.
- [05:49]
B
I mean, it's true, right? Like, that's what they're doing. Oh, literally.
- [05:51]
C
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.
- [06:01]
B
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 MAGA firmament here. Matt Walsh says there should be social consciousness for people who openly celebrate the murder of an innocent, but there obviously shouldn't be any legal repercussions for hate speech, which is not even a valid incoherent concept. Then we have Eric Erickson, our Attorney General, is apparently a. There's free speech and then there's hate speech. No, ma', am, that is not the law. We have rona, 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 Bondy must be fired. Hate speech crackdown in the name of Charlie Kirk Kirk rly 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 normalize threats, call for assassinations and cheer on political violence. That era is over.
- [07:22]
C
She bungled it. I mean, she, she put it in terms, as we said, that they can understand as being used against them. I mean, one guy, not, not as big a deal as the fellows you're talking about here, but this sort of like a MAHA influencer named Kevin Bass, I thought, put it in a funn 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, but I think they just, they just see hate speech.
- [07:50]
B
Don't even worry about the hate speech. Just jail them. Just, 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?
- [08:27]
C
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. 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 is 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.
- [09:08]
B
Well, this is like. This is what gets me, is, like, 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 them, 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 overexposed in a way that we've never seen an attorney general before. And I think there's a reason that attorney generals try to keep a low profile. It's because everything you say is going to be scrutinized because you are the person, the 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 got to please the boss. But it does strike me that she's overexposed.
- [10:03]
C
The Fox News stuff comes up a lot. I mean, I went to early in this administration, I went to this. This rally that was sort of like, why aren't we rounding up the libs outside the Justice Department? And they said, why? You know, 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 and the administration, but they really keyed in on her appearances.
- [10:27]
B
You think it's misogyny 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.
- [10:38]
C
Oh, no, it definitely is, but. But I think. Not this incident in particular, but I think the broader, like, oh, you know, you're going on Fox News too much. We got to get rid of you.
- [10:48]
B
I think the idea that she's, like, overdoing it kind of compared to others is ridiculous. Right. Like, I mean, Stephen Miller's on Fox every night. Bongino is, you know, do. Well, Bongino does.
- [11:00]
C
Bongino. Well, Bongino 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 name? And he goes, okay, yeah. You know, I mean, he's putting out all this stuff that. That, you know, they should not be doing. And I think, obviously, yeah, that's on Pam Bondi's watch as well.
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B
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 precedes. I mean, obviously it works because they're elected, but it also has real downsides in that you do shit like this and you get in trouble.
- [11:31]
C
The one other thing I would add about Pam Bondi is, like, we also were talking about how she's kind of out of step with the base, but she also sort of is 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 gonna have. We're gonna round up all the Democrats who were involved in investigating him, and then that put a lot in Pam Bondi's lap. And so now. Now it's kind of her responsibility to deal with that. Sure.
- [11:55]
B
But it feels like they're just moving on to the next. It's 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 anyways. Okay, well, we'll see what Pam Bondi. How much longer she has. I think she's fine, but we'll see. No, we'll move on to the next controversial after this. Will Summer, author of False Flag. Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it.
- [12:17]
C
Hey, happy to be here.