Reacting to the swearing in of new Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday, and the flurry of directives she issued hours later to DOJ staffers, MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire noted a significant change of venue and what it could mean.
Speaking with MSNBC "Morning Joe" co-host Willie Geist, Lemire pointed out that Trump invited Bondi to be sworn in using the Oval Office –– an unusual occurrence, he stated.
"Almost immediately after that swearing in ceremony, the attorney general got to work," Geist reported. "Bondi issued more than a dozen directives aimed at overhauling the Justice Department. In one memo, she created the, quote, 'weaponization working group' to review the cases brought up against President Trump, including the special counsel cases and the Manhattan hush money case."
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"Yeah, I mean, that message is pretty clear, and this is what Donald Trump promised," Lemire responded.
"We need to just talk about the setting for a second here," Lemire added. "It's not just that this is the first swearing in that President Trump attended. This was done in the Oval Office itself, these things do not tend to happen in the Oval Office."
"We have seen other cabinet secretaries, even just recent days, and certainly with previous presidents, they get sworn in executive chambers,' he elaborated. "I believe [DHS secretary] Kristi Noem was sworn in at Clarence Thomas' house. Even though there's a wide variety of settings, the Oval Office is unusual: message sent."
"Yeah, unusual message sent," co-host Joe Scarborough agreed.
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