Trump knocks the UK on free speech but uses Kirk's death to silence it at home | Opinion

President Donald Trump is in the United Kingdom for a state visit, where he is expected to again lecture that country's leaders about their civil and criminal policies on what should be free speech.

But first, as he was leaving the White House on Sept. 16, Trump exploited the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk to exert exactly the style of threatening governmental overreach on free speech that he upbraids the U.K. for.

Trump was asked about Attorney General Pam Bondi's controversial comments on a podcast the day before, where she equated criticism of Kirk and his work to "hate speech" that she said could be prosecuted by the Department of Justice. The attorney general later tried to walk that back, claiming she was only talking about "threats of violence."

That's not remotely close to what Bondi said on the podcast, as critics were quick to point out. And it's certainly not the message her boss took away from her comments.

Here's what Trump told ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl when he asked about Bondi: "She’d 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 doesn't want free speech. He wants favored speech. For himself. And he's using our government, and now Kirk's killing, to reach for that.

Trump will use Charlie Kirk's death for his agenda – not free speech

I learned two decades ago, when I was reporting on Trump as a celebrity businessman who lapsed in and out of bankruptcies, that he is always – habitually and compulsively – testing the limits of what he can get away with.

Kirk being gunned down by a sniper while encouraging debate on a college campus in Utah is not just a tragedy to Trump. It's an opportunity to overstep, to crack down on the very thing Kirk saw himself as championing – free speech.

Here's what Kirk had to say about "hate speech"in a social media post in 2024: "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."

Plenty has been said about Kirk's death. We shouldn't celebrate his fatal shooting, which itself was an attack on free speech. And we shouldn't sanitize his work, which was constitutionally protected but so often based in bigotry, misogyny and this oh-so-off assertion that White men in America are somehow oppressed.

The cofounder of Turning Point USA built a thriving organization and lucrative career in part on a free speech intimidation machine, a "professor watchlist" that gave rise to harassment for academics. His fans have now established a new database to funnel harassment toward anyone who speaks of Kirk in ways that offend them.

All of that was and is protected by our Constitution, too.

Kirk's own words on free speech in England are haunting

The First Amendment wasn't written to shield us from people like Charlie Kirk. It was enshrined in our Constitution to defend us from our own government. The inspiration for that: A king in England whose abuses when it came to freedom of expression helped spark the revolution that created the United States of America.

Trump, while he's visiting with the current king of the United Kingdom, should give that some thought. But, of course, he won't.

Instead, his administration will exploit Kirk's death to harass his perceived enemies. Vice President JD Vance and Stephen Miller, Trump's chief henchman for horrible ideas, used Kirk's own podcast on Sept. 15 to set that in motion.

Vance claimed the Trump administration would go after groups that "foment" violence.

Miller upped the hyperbole with this: "We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks."

Neither man offered anything approaching evidence to support the claim that a "campaign" led to Kirk's killing. That's now standard operating procedure in the Trump administration: First, render a politically advantageous verdict, then have sycophants "investigate" shoddy claims in a sham show trial of sound bites and social media slop.

Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old accused of killing Kirk, appeared in a Utah court Sept. 16, where he faced a count of aggravated murder and other criminal charges. There was no loose talk from prosecutors there about shadowy groups fomenting violence in the service of terrorism. They stuck to the facts of the case. That's their job.

Kirk left behind a haunting warning, via a social media post in May while he was visiting the U.K., rallying for free speech there.

"Every day, people say, well, someone should go kill Charlie Kirk," he said in an interview. "I don't like it. But that's protected speech. In America, we care about what you do, not about what you say."

If Trump and Vance and Bondi and Miller want to honor Kirk, as they claim, they should respect his position on free speech and the First Amendment. Anything short of that is a debasement of his life and death.