"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."

Those are the words of Charlie Kirk, posted to social media just over a year before he was brutally assassinated on a college campus for the supposed crime of hate speech, leading millions to mourn the loss of one of the foremost leaders of the next generation of conservatives by continuing his fight for core American values.

Unfortunately, Attorney General — and former Qatar lobbyist — Pam Bondi decided to do quite the opposite, promoting an ideology straight from the progressive playbook that would make any blue-haired campus activist screech with delight.

"There's free speech and then there's hate speech. And there's no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie," Bondi announced on the Katie Miller Podcast. "We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech."

Excuse me, what?

Later that day, Bondi's latest foray into nonsensical-land continued, declaring that employers "have an obligation to get rid of people" for "saying horrible things," and that "businesses cannot discriminate" and could be prosecuted if — for example — they refuse to "print posters with Charlie's pictures on them for a vigil."

If you thought that Pam Bondi's bizarre Epstein files saga was embarrassing enough — so much so that any politician with a scrap of dignity would have resigned and moved to Bora Bora — this assault on the fundamental core of freedom of speech is not only anti-conservative in nature, but it flies in the face of the free speech positions promoted by Charlie Kirk himself!

Put bluntly, a Republican standing on Charlie Kirk's grave to promote hate speech laws is about as offensive — and constitutionally illiterate — as it gets.

Here's the problem: It's becoming absurdly clear that Pam Bondi is nothing but a ladder-climbing political animal who made millions in the foggy world between public and private life through a startling refusal (or inability) to give a damn about conservative — if not American — values: an accusation that's beyond concerning considering that Pam Bondi has been tasked with leading the United States Department of Justice!

It's one thing for various members of the Trump administration to not believe — in their hearts — certain conservative values. Deep down, some may not care about abortion or border control or gun rights, but at least they're not stupid enough to go on national television and declare that abortion is a human right, that there are no such thing as borders or that guns are weapons of war. But not Pam Bondi, who just spewed anti-free speech nonsense that would make Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blush.

When free speech — as Charlie Kirk stated repeatedly — is the most important principle at the heart of our great Republic, how much longer can Donald Trump sit around and let someone as laughably underqualified as Pam Bondi continue to swim in the wrong direction? At least Matt Gaetz wouldn't have been so dumb as to say that hate speech isn't free speech ...

To find out more about Ian Haworth and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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