President Donald Trump publicly directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to aggressively target his political enemies with investigations over the weekend — and MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire reported it had Democratic leadership privately sweating.
The president posted — and then deleted — a message to Bondi complaining that "nothing is being done" about former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, a day after federal prosecutor Erik Siebert complied with Trump's demand for his resignation for failing to bring mortgage fraud charges against James.
"There's some speculationthat this was meant as a private message to Pam Bondi," Lemire told "Morning Joe." "The White House has not confirmed that, but the writing of it might have been meant as a DM, as opposed to a Truth Social post because Trump then took that post down, tried to clean it up with a subsequent posting.
"But this is, we know President Trump campaignedon the idea of retribution. That was one of his campaign platforms last year, and this is what that appears to look like, and wehave seen U.S. attorneys across this country find a lack of evidence, there has not been a chargeyet against Letitia James, theNew York State attorney general. There have not been charges yet against Sen. Schiff or others."
"We have also seen, though,an effort by this president toremove a U.S. attorney who wouldn't bring charges, andhe makes mention of that inthis post, too, saying he needsto be replaced with someoneperhaps more compliant, and I think this iswhat Democrats have beenwarning about for months, that we'd get to this step," Lemire added.
"Will there be follow-through?We'll see in the days ahead, but this is, as one senior Democrat put to me over the weekend, this is a five-alarm fire."
"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough agreed, saying that Trump had been announcing his intention to pursue criminal cases against the prosecutors who indicted him and the lawmakers who presided over his impeachment.
"Well, yeah, this is actuallywhat Democrats and members ofthe media have been worrying aboutfor years," Scarborough said. "I mean, you know,for years, the president promised and,you know, he said, 'I am yourretribution,' and then as itgot closer and then when he gotelected, 'Oh, I'm not going tohave time for retribution, it'sup to them,' and this Truth Social post laid it all bare. Then the presidentsort of circled back and triedto soften his comments a littlebit later, but it's veryinteresting."
"I would guess being an attorneyfor Donald Trump, whounderstands, as Rudy Giulianiunderstands, as Rudy Giulianilearned, you can say one thing when you're in front of thepress, outside of a federalcourthouse," Scarborough added. "You go into thecourthouse,you better actually stick withthe law and stick with thefacts. When you're talking to ajudge, bad things willhappen to you eventually. Maybenot that day, but eventuallyyou will be held to account if you try to lie."