The lies have it: how Trump's most loyal trooper reached a new low
It’s a shame they don’t play entrance music for witnesses at U.S. Senate hearings.
Attorney General Pam Bondi came to the Senate Judiciary Committee to praise Donald Trump — and make sure no one tried to bury him — and she spent four defiant hours doing just that. Bondi, famous for choreographing her endless Fox News cameos, surely wishes she could have rolled out more production values on Tuesday.
Just imagine the potential.
“Pam Bondi strolled to the witness chair wearing a MAGA hat to the beautiful sounds of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man,” Sean Hannity could have reported. “If that didn’t bring tears to your eyes, you’re some radical leftist or squish. Definitely not human.”
Unfortunately, Bondi had to settle for lip syncing the words. But in a MAGA movement so sexist as to publicly embrace submissiveness as a special virtue for its women — even though the men are just as pathetic — Bondi outdid herself.
Bondi “dodged questions on 14 topics” — which you have to admit is pretty impressive — according to the Washington Post’s scorecard. Here’s just a smattering of Bondi’s groveling devotion to her man:
- Bondi stated, “My attorneys have done incredible work advancing President Trump’s agenda and protecting the Executive Branch from judicial overreach” — arguably the most blatant rejection of any pretense of DOJ independence from the presidency ever recorded in the Senate.
- When asked by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) if the Epstein investigation files included incriminating photos of Trump with half-naked young women, Bondi didn’t say no — she chose to attack the senator instead.
- She told Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL): “I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump. And, currently, the National Guard are on the way to Chicago. If you’re not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will.”
- When questioned about reports that former FBI Director James Comey’s indictment came shortly after President Trump publicly called for his prosecution, Bondi refused to discuss any conversations she had with the White House, repeatedly stating, “I am not going to discuss any internal conversations with the White House.”
- Bondi declined to discuss internal conversations with the White House about National Guard deployments or DOJ decisions — then turned and attacked Democrats for politicizing law enforcement.
- Declined to answer Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) about whether she was firing career prosecutors solely because they worked on January 6 cases Trump doesn’t like.
- When pressed by Sen. Whitehouse on $50,000 in cash delivered to Trump border czar Tom Homan, she wouldn’t confirm or deny — instead telling him, “Senator, you’re welcome to talk to the FBI.”
Confrontational hearings between officials of any administration and senators are hardly new. But the degree to which Bondi disrespected the process — apparently in keeping with Trump’s new playbook in which witnesses attack the character of adversarial senators rather than respond to their questions — is in a league of its own.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) afterwards called it “possibly a new low for attorneys general testifying before the United States Congress,” saying, “Her apparent strategy is to attack and conceal. I have never seen anything close to it in terms of the combativeness, the evasiveness and sometimes deceptiveness.”
It really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. October marks the 12th anniversary of Bondi’s first act of public fealty to Trump. Back then, she was Florida’s attorney general and he was just a famous guy whose Trump University happened to be getting sued by the state of New York as a fraudulent “sham.”
Here’s how a Palm Beach Post editorial described what took place in October 2013:
Just days after Ms. Bondi’s office announced that it might join a lawsuit against Mr. Trump and his school, Mr. Trump’s foundation cut a $25,000 check to a Bondi re-election committee. Despite the timing, the political committee found nothing amiss. It kept the money and Ms. Bondi decided not to participate in the lawsuit.
Twelve years later, it was hardly Bondi’s first Trump rodeo when she bent the knee at the Senate hearing. It won’t be the last.
But she’ll be hard pressed to surpass the unintended irony she displayed in personally attacking Trump nemesis Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) rather than answering any of his questions.
“If you worked for me, you would have been fired because you were censured by Congress for lying,” Bondi told Schiff, without a hint of self-awareness.
Talk about a government shutdown. If Trump’s inner circle was subjected to that standard, he would be obligated under the Bondi standard to utter his famous “You’re fired!” to every single one of them.
Including, most definitely, Pam Bondi.