A Republican congressman's rant defending President Donald Trump was interrupted by another CNN panelist who quoted Vice President JD Vance and slain activist Charlie Kirk to disprove his point.

Vance encouraged supporters to file complaints with employers for anyone who criticized Kirk online and Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened to prosecute anyone who criticized conservatives with what she called "hate speech," and CNN's Audie Cornish challenged Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) to justify those threats.

"This is where I sit," said Zinke, who previously served as Trump's interior secretary. "There's a difference between expression and hate. There is a difference between by a threat, a violent, violent threat, and, for instance, if I threaten to kill you and I project that ... There are lines and I agree with Pam Bondi, and there are results of of ignoring, for instance, all right, a news outlet called President Trump 3,000 times a Nazi – 3,000 times."

"He's not a Nazi," Zinke added. "You may call him a lot of things, you know, braggadocious. You may call him a lot of things, but he's not a Nazi."

Cornish asked whether calling Trump a Nazi was an incitement to violence, and he suggested that it might be.

"You know what?" Zinke said. "I think that's flaming – what you're doing is you are causing a rift where there isn't one there, and falsely accusing someone of being a Nazi."

Cornish reminded the lawmaker that Trump's critics had a free speech right to point out how he reminds them of a Nazi, which he grudgingly conceded, and Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright stepped in to set him straight.

"Congressman, stop it," Seawright said. "His own vice president called him a Nazi, so we can't we can't we can't pick and choose when it's convenient. But can I just share something with you from Charlie Kirk? '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.'"

"So I think we're having a conversation around convenient speech versus what's free speech," Seawright added, "and I think that's where people like me are frustrated. It's good for some, but not good for others, including the president."

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