President Trump and the GOP condemn leftist hate speech but ignore their own | Opinion

Hate speech is on the minds of many Republican leaders in the wake Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

But in their rush to condemn anyone who has said anything critical of Kirk, himself a polarizing figure in U.S. politics but beloved in GOP ranks, conservatives are engaging in forms of cancel culture that they used to blame liberals of conducting.

Case in point: President Trump wants to prosecute journalists for what he considers unfair coverage that he likens to a form of “hate.”

“We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly, it’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart,” Trump said, responding to a question from ABC’s Jonathan Karl.

Trump on Tuesday echoed what Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Monday — that her Department of Justice would target for prosecution any “hate speech” against conservatives or about Kirk in the wake of his shooting death.

As reported by Politico, on Monday Bondi said on a podcast that “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.”

Such an assertion is wrong, of course. The First Amendment makes no such distinction. Conservative commentators pointed that out in criticism of Bondi. So on Tuesday Bondi had to revise her view by saying hate speech “that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime.”

The test for speech was established in the 1969 case, Brandenburg v. Ohio. According to the National Constitution Center, the U.S. Supreme Court found that “the government may not prohibit speech unless it is directed to and likely to cause immediate lawless action.”

That said, Trump and Republicans at large have reacted with ferocity over any comments made online by anyone critical of Kirk, whose conservative Turning Point USA group is credited for helping deliver young voters to Trump’s winning campaign.

Kirk held strongly conservative views: He was critical of gay and transgender rights; believed in gun rights for citizens, even if it meant some shooting deaths occurred; opposed affirmative action, thought Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was an “awful” person and that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake; believed Jews controlled America’s colleges, nonprofits and Hollywood; viewed Islam as a danger to the nation; and thought climate change “was complete gibberish.”

A “naming and shaming” campaign is underway by MAGA adherents to out anyone who posts derogatory comments about Kirk on social media. Trump himself has used the phrase “radical left” to describe Democrats as the cause of the shooting that killed Kirk. And Vice President JD Vance has encouraged shaming people who made anti-Kirk posts in hopes of them losing their jobs.

The MAGA shame effort has resulted in some people being fired and others put on leave while their social media posts are investigated. One example of that is Barri Brennan, a lecturer at Fresno State. After Kirk was shot but before news broke that he had died, she posted a video and said this:

“You want to know what I think? It’s too bad he’s not dead. Gonna put my political views right out there. And that’s exactly what I thought. He’s just shot? I was like, he’s not dead? I don’t even know who he is. Just a description of him. Don’t care.”

Such a statement is clearly offensive; it is never right to wish death on anyone. But in America, it is not illegal to say awful things. Whether Brennan violated any code of conduct for instructors at Fresno State will be the subject of the investigation.

At the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, a part-time biology instructor was fired for “insensitive” comments made after Kirk’s murder.

Clovis Unified officials are also looking into online remarks of an educator there, but no action against her has been taken. Elizabeth Houtsinger posted comments appearing to equate Kirk to a “Nazi” before calling him a “terrible human.”

Firings and suspensions are happening elsewhere. Clemson University in South Carolina suspended an employee over social media posts it found offensive. A coach and English professor at Cumberland University in Tennesee were fired for “inappropriate comments on the internet related to the tragic shooting of Charlie Kirk.” Politico also reported firings at other institutions in the South.

Whither free speech?

The irony is that Trump and his MAGA minions complained loudest after Trump was banned from Facebook and Instagram following the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump made restoring free speech on social media one of the key planks in his 2024 campaign. But now such freedom only extends when the president agrees with you, it seems.

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” Trump said in a video message last week after Kirk was shot. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”

Nevermind that Trump and other GOP leaders have for years excoriated Democrats as socialists. Trump has called his political opponents “scum,” “vermin,” “animals” and “enemies of the people.”

Investigators into the shooting of Kirk in Utah have yet to ascribe a motive to the suspect, Tyler Robinson. For Trump to thus link the shooting to the “radical left” is baseless until proven.

But it might be good politics, given it fires up the GOP base and distracts attention from poor economic news now developing under Trump’s lead. As reported by the Economist in a Sept. 16 update: “Retail sales are weakening, housing starts have dropped to their lowest since mid-2020 and an immigration crackdown is tightening labor supply. And the labor market may be softening: America added just 73,000 jobs in July, far below economists’ expectations.”

Kirk shooting in context

Sean Westwood directs the Polarization Research Lab at Dartmouth College. He wrote an essay for Politico that puts the current situation into context.

“After the 2024 assassination attempt on then-candidate Donald Trump, leaders from both parties cooled the national temperature, issuing unified condemnations that reinforced the taboo against violence,” he says.

“Today, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, key political figures are doing the opposite. Instead of seeking unity, we are witnessing the cynical minting of a martyr and a call to fight. Instead of shared grief, there are accusations of collective guilt, painting half the country as murderers.”

Trump has shown he cannot govern without an enemy. Just on Sunday, he likened those on the left side of the political spectrum as “scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the place, that’s the left, that’s not the right.”

In fact, both Republican and Democratic leaders have been targets of violence in recent years. Minnesota legislator Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, and her husband were gunned down at their home in June by a suspect who had a hit list of 45 elected officials — all Democrats.

The shooting of Charlie Kirk is the result of one alleged gunman — not liberals, not Democrats, not the media. In their haste to memorialize Kirk and villify their opponents, Trump and the GOP are throwing free speech away and canceling whatever they don’t like. That is hypocritical and blatantly un-American.