Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared for another combative congressional hearing Wednesday, but MS NOW's Mika Brzezinski said her pugnacious performance may have backfired.
The attorney general hurled insults and interrupted Democratic lawmakers as they grilled her over the Jeffrey Epstein case and President Donald Trump's long-standing ties to the late sex offender, and the "Morning Joe" co-host warned that Bondi likely inflamed interest in the matter.
"I just was watching this allday yesterday and I thought if her goal, as some argue,was to protect the presidentfrom some information thatmight be damaging to him, shedid the worst job you couldpossibly do," Brzezinski said, "because she hasjust re-energized all thepeople who might be exhaustedat this point, including someof the victims. If anyone wasthinking of walking away orthinking, oh my God, I justcan't take it anymore – she wasinfuriating, number one."
"Butthat wasn't the worst thingthat she did," Brzezinski added. "If indeed she wastrying to protect someone inher performance, she appearedto be dishonest, and if she wasworking for an audience of one,she failed because she justre-energized the entiremovement, because she was sounlikable, inept, infuriating and completely incompetentevery step of the way, and, youknow, her demeanor even was,I'd say, if I will say the women who are fighting fortheir lives right now, thevictims and those supportingthem this morning, they arere-energized to take this tothe very end."
Host Joe Scarborough agreed, saying that Bondi clearly appeared to be covering up Trump's alleged ties to Epstein's sex trafficking network.
"All she did wasre-energize them," he said, "and Iwouldn't say, for me, it wasn'tinfuriating. It wasembarrassing, it was inept, itwas, it looked like a total – she made it look like a total cover up, and will,obviously she has justmultiplied Americans' interestin the Epstein files becausenow everybody is asking, whatare they hiding?What is she hiding, and thisleads to, again, [Commerce Secretary] Howard Lutnick."
"Could this White House do moreto gin up more interest in the Epstein files than keeping on aguy caught lying red-handed, whoadmitted that yesterday or theday before, red-handed on hisrelationship with Jeffrey Epstein?" Scarborough added. "It seems that everymove they make is calculated togenerate more interest and moreintensity on Epstein files."