Anyone who's paid attention to how trump handles his minions uh underlings oh what the hell let's call them flunkies would have told Pam Bondi this day was coming (via Jonathan Chait now documenting atrocities for the Atlantic):
Pam Bondi’s 421 days as attorney general of the United States came to an end in the only way they could have: with her being fired ignominiously via a social-media post. Donald Trump announced that Bondi, though a “Great American Patriot and a loyal friend,” will be “transitioning to a much needed and important new job” that, despite its great importance, remains a secret. Also, her new job will be in the private sector, which makes it a strange thing for a president to be determining—or at least this would be strange if the administration still observed traditional boundaries between public and private, which it does not.
In trumpland, loyalty does not flow both ways: trump will insist on you being loyal to him while he reserves the privilege of tossing you under every bus that passes by. It's both sad and funny so many Republicans and Culture War wingnuts - remember Chris Christie? - keep volunteering for jobs that will humiliate them publicly and end with them getting tire tracks all across their backs.
When his second term began, Trump sought out an attorney general whose loyalty would not waver under even the most trying circumstances. Bondi did not bother pretending to uphold the Justice Department’s independence. She announced to the staff upon taking office, “We are so proud to work at the directive of Donald Trump.”
Bondi faithfully echoed Trump’s messaging, calling him “the greatest president in the history of our country” and scolding Democrats in Congress two months ago for investigating his administration when the Dow Jones Industrial Average had topped 50,000. (It is currently at 46,000.)
Most important, Bondi investigated and brought charges against seemingly anybody Trump wanted her to. At minimum, Bondi tried to investigate a long list of Trump targets, and if she refused any of his demands, no evidence of doing so has made its way to the public. Her problem turned out to be that it remains very difficult to convict Americans of a crime they did not commit, even more so when those targets have competent lawyers. And so, as Bondi kept bringing the cases Trump ordered up, she kept losing them, which made Trump angrier and more determined to compel Bondi to bring flimsy charges against his enemies.
Noticed this earlier: trump's gaslighting is meant to make him always winning, always the victim of others, and so he wants that false narrative pushed to the limits to punish all who ruin that self-image of dominance and success. Problem with that is how lies can't overwhelm the facts when presented in courts of law, where Bondi and her underlings struggled to even convince grand juries to play along. What I said just last year:
The only good news about all of this is that trump - and his lackeys like Bondi and Halligan, and other wingnuts in the Justice Dept. - is obsessing over the twisted reflections in his own addled mind. The courts - in spite of what the Far Right thinks of the law - require proof and relevancy to work, not rumor hearsay or fake accusation.
The bad news is that trump - and his lackeys Bondi, Halligan, and dozens of other wingnuts - will never admit he is in the wrong, and will double-down on these attacks and fake allegations until all he has left is to burn the entire judiciary to the ground for failing to uphold his lies.
And Bondi did indeed double-down. It still didn't work, even as the Justice Department collapsed into ineptitude trying to cover up trump scandals like the Epstein Files. Bondi tried early in 2025 to placate the conspiracy wingnuts who were convinced the Epstein Affair was a massive Democratic (Clinton) scandal, but she did so by rehashing pre-existing evidence. It made Bondi and her staff look like fools, and drove enough Republican congresscritters to force a vote mandating more Epstein disclosures... which Bondi kept trying to stop, and did so poorly enough that more damning evidence against trump kept getting out. Especially the recent revelations that trump may have raped a 13-year-old girl, and that Ghislaine Maxwell - so far the only one in that power circle sitting in jail for the exploitation of teen girls - had copies of that report while Bondi's Justice Department tried to hide it.
That failure to stop the Epstein scandal from escalating is why a good number of pundits think trump soured on Bondi so quickly, but take note that this firing happened just after a vital Supreme Court hearing about birthright citizenship turned into a disaster for trump - and his fellow anti-immigrant lackeys - that arguably became the final nail in Bondi's coffin. Too many times playing to trump's vanity and bullying ways, and zero results to show for it.
It never mattered how close Bondi tied herself to trump's ascendancy. All the way back to 2013 - when she wrangled campaign money out of trump to cancel a state-level investigation into trump's fake university - she had proved herself the most consistent boot-licker among the Republican ranks. Bondi did everything asked of her - which involved violating a lot of ethics and constitutional laws - and still could not stay on trump's friends list.
Whoever becomes the next whipping boy Attorney General should be forewarned: trump is not your buddy, he will send you out to do the dirtiest work and violate every norm and law and cover yourself in shit, and when you don't get results - and you won't, because trump is asking for the impossible - you will get tire tracks all across your back when the bus comes back round.
Then again wingnut Republicans don't care, do they. They will line up for the shit job thinking they alone can do it right, and they'll never learn. That's how desperate and broken the Far Right is right now.
Sad thing is, a lot of innocent people are going to get body-slammed even harder by the next AG trying to kiss trump's ass even harder than before.
Gods help us.
1 comment:
On paper, Bondi was one of the few picks Fergus made who had any relevant experience at all: she had been AG for a state and in theory should have known how a DOJ operates. In practice, it never mattered what his lackeys knew how to do, all they were supposed to do is help him destroy the government that had tried to prosecute him for his crimes. Unless he fully succeeds (which would remove any power he has) none of his lackeys will succeed either.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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