Remember Christian cakeshop owner Jack Phillips? It would seem that Attorney General Pam Bondi doesn’t.
Ms. Bondi was hit with a backlash on the right for saying she would take on “hate speech” in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination, then threatening to prosecute Office Depot over an employee who refused to print posters for a Kirk vigil.
“Businesses cannot discriminate,” Ms. Bondi told Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity in a Monday night interview. “If you want to go in and print posters with Charlie’s pictures on them for a vigil, you have to let them do that. We can prosecute you for that.”
Earlier Monday, she told podcast host Katie Miller that “we will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
“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,” said Ms. Bondi.
She sought to clarify her remarks Tuesday by explaining what she meant by “hate speech,” although she didn’t put the issue to rest.
“Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime,” Ms. Bondi said on X. “For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over.”
Numerous conservatives pointed out that threats of violence aren’t “hate speech” – they’re threats of violence – and that “hate speech” was a term concocted by the left to shut down right-of-center discussion and debate, particularly on college campuses.
Conservative commentator Ian Miles Cheong replied to Ms. Bondi: “Thank you for clarifying. Just don’t use that term again. The Left has weaponized it to silence legal speech.”
Perhaps Kirk himself said it best when he declared last year on X: “Hate speech does not legally exist 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.”
Get rid of her. Today. This is insane. Conservatives have fought for decades for the right to refuse service to anyone. We won that fight. Now Pam Bondi wants to roll it all back for no reason. The employee who didn’t print the flyer was already fired by his employer. This stuff… https://t.co/Ry7PEUz1ca
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) September 16, 2025
Leading the anti-Bondi charge on the right was Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh, who called Tuesday for the former Florida attorney general to be fired.
“Get rid of her. Today. This is insane,” Mr. Walsh said on X. “Conservatives have fought for decades for the right to refuse service to anyone. We won that fight. Now Pam Bondi wants to roll it all back for no reason.”
He pointed out that the Office Depot worker in Portage, Michigan, who refused to print the poster had already been dismissed.
A video showed the employee telling a vigil organizer last week that the order for flyers had not been filled, saying, “It’s propaganda. I’m sorry. We don’t print that here.”
Office Depot/OfficeMax issued a statement Friday calling the employee’s behavior “completely unacceptable and insensitive,” adding that “the associate involved is no longer with the organization.”
“This stuff is being handled successfully through free speech and free markets,” Mr. Walsh said. “This is totally gratuitous and pointless. We need the AG focused on bringing down the left-wing terror cells, not prosecuting Office Depot for God’s sake.”
The incident drew comparisons to the long-running legal fight led by Mr. Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, who refused to create a same-sex wedding cake in a case he ultimately won at the Supreme Court.
Conservative writer Charles C.W. Cooke followed up Tuesday with a political gut-check.
“So, just to check, given the encouragingly universal reaction to Bondi I’m seeing this morning: We’re all agreed, going forward, that there’s no such thing as hate speech, and that Jack Phillips can choose which cakes to bake, right?” Mr. Cooke asked on X. “This is settled now?”
His Tuesday article on National Review Online was headlined: “Pam Bondi’s Ridiculous 24 Hours.”
“If Office Depot had declined the request because the customer had white skin, that would be illegal,” he said. “But printing is expression, and private companies are thoroughly within their rights to decline to accept a commission that implicates them in that expression.”
