These GOP fools were played like a fiddle — and they know it

It seems like only yesterday that Pam Bondi was confirmed as Attorney General and every political type in Washington assured us she was qualified because, after all, she'd once held the job in Florida.

I’m cynical in the most extreme way when it comes to anything involving the Trump administration, so I had zero faith that Bondi would be a guardrail. Instead, she was a drop-off, teetering on the ledge alongside Donald Trump throughout her tenure before eventually being pushed off.

Bondi's qualifications went out the window the moment she walked into the Justice Department. What replaced them was a single operating principle: pleasing Donald Trump, regardless of the humiliation it would cause her and the Justice Department.

Like everyone else who enters Trump's touch-it-and-you-will-burn orbit, she flamed out. She debased herself, sparring combatively with House and Senate committees in a manner no Attorney General in this country's history has ever stooped to. She treated oversight hearings like UFC matches instead of constitutional obligations.

But all that performance was to no avail. She was discarded, not because she went too far, but because, in Trump’s eyes, she didn't go far enough. She wasn't executing the retribution campaign with sufficient zeal. She was flubbing the Epstein files. She looked, to Trump, like a failure, because she would only go half-way down the avenue of illegality.

So out went Bondi. In came Todd Blanche. Trump has always wanted his Roy Cohn. Now he's got him.

Blanche was already the White House's point man on the Epstein files, and he mishandled that assignment badly, but in a way that benefited Trump. It’s appalling what Blanche has done, by meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, by releasing documents with the victims' identities unredacted, and by his treatment of the survivors when he was forced to meet with them.

But where Bondi merely disappointed Trump, Blanche has been building an entirely different résumé: the indictment of James Comey, the subpoenaing of family members of New York Times reporters over the Air Force One story, and his dithering over the Epstein files.

Most tellingly, though, was his willingness to greenlight something Bondi reportedly balked at: an "anti-weaponization fund" worth $1.8 billion, a slush fund that looked, for all the world, like a mechanism to compensate the president's allies and January 6 defendants, crooks, cop abusers, property destroyers, gun-toting Confederates, and all.

That fund is what nearly sank his nomination. Two Republicans, John Cornyn and Tom Tillis, held out until Blanche put his signature on a document narrowing the IRS audit protections and formally rescinding the fund. That's what got him through committee Tuesday, 12-10, straight down the party line.

Cornyn and Tillis are presumably smart men, but they're leaving in January 2027, and they surely know the paper Todd Blanche signed was counterfeit.

Donald Trump has spent months maneuvering toward a $1.8 billion pipeline, audit immunity for himself and his family, and a payout mechanism for the people who stormed the Capitol on his behalf.

You think all that evaporates because Blanche supposedly rescinded the fund days before his confirmation vote to buy the two votes he needed? Trump is laughing hysterically today. He played Cornyn and Tillis for fools.

That fund will get resurrected, restructured, or reborn under a new name the moment Blanche is confirmed. I guarantee it. He will find a way to say he didn't lie when the entire world sees otherwise.

This is the pattern. RFK Jr. told the committee what it needed to hear. Brett Kavanaugh told the committee what it needed to hear. Kash Patel told the committee what it needed to hear. Then each of them got the job and did precisely what they wanted all along.

They lied through their teeth and had no remorse about doing so because they knew they'd face no repercussions. Senate Republicans are just a cast of cowardly Wizard of Oz lions with no teeth and no growl.

Why would Todd Blanche, a man who was Donald Trump's personal defense attorney before he was ever a public official, be the exception to this pattern of conceit and deception? He lied like the rest of them, because he was clearly told by Trump to do so.

Nobody makes a move without checking in with the Dear Leader.

Bondi was the warm-up act. She proved a Trump-aligned Attorney General could survive public embarrassment and committee hostility. Blanche is the main card: a nominee who has already shown, before he's even confirmed, that he'll pursue indictments of the president's critics, subpoena journalists' families, and quietly engineer nine-figure slush funds on Trump's behalf.

Just imagine what he does with the full authority of the office and no more confirmation votes standing between him and Trump's wish list. And if he gets called before committees about his behavior, if it's unseemly? You know he'll just conveniently lie because the truth doesn't matter in Congress anymore.

If the full Senate confirms Todd Blanche, the Department of Justice stops being a department of justice in anything but name. It becomes what critics have warned about for months. It will be, for all intents and purposes, Donald Trump's personal law firm, funded by the American taxpayer, aimed at his enemies, and shielding his family.

I don't think most people have fully reckoned with how far that could go. Dark days are ahead, and they arrive the moment he's confirmed by the Senate.