Under no circumstances will anyone with any introspection and dignity ever feel sorry for Attorney General Pam Bondi or her position relative to the entire Epstein matter. Going out on a limb, however, it does seem that if anyone has any reason to believe that all of this has been personally unfair, it may well be Bondi – who was thrust into a completely untenable position in which she likely had little choice but to plow forward as ordered. Despite the loyalty, longtime Washington insider Eleonor Clift thinks that it may well be that Bondi is sacrificed at the Epstein altar as a means to diffuse the scandal – if that’s even possible. If such a thing were to come to pass, it likely isn’t fair – not that any of us should really care. Still…
Clift notes that it’s often the summer scandals that really trip up a president, and this summer has delivered a thunderous one in which the underlying behavior is sickening – worthy of outrage, unlike some in the past. Perhaps that’s why this one’s thunder claps a little more crisply and still won’t fade. As Clift writes:
Currently, Attorney General Pam Bondi is in a particularly precarious position, as the official most directly in the line of fire over the Epstein debacle. The MAGA base doesn’t want to turn on Trump, but they want someone to pay for the switcheroo they’ve been served and, having previously promised the release of those files that apparently may no longer exist, Bondi is the likely fall guy.
It is all but impossible to judge which “mistakes” are attributable solely to Bondi’s decision-making versus which ones may reflect nothing but orders from Trump himself, or even those circumstances that don’t lend themselves to any good outcome at all for the administration. There is reporting already, after all, that Trump is mentioned many times in the files. It is not like he has an easy way out other than to make them disappear, and they are trying a version of that right now. But if there is anything for which Bondi might have to answer, it is the early promise to release that “list” on her desk. Nothing that we see compelled her to make such a sweeping proposition. But it may have been the early plan. It is all but impossible to know.
Clift goes on to reinforce her argument:
In Trump’s cabinet, blind loyalty is the credential that matters. “If the boss is happy, he doesn’t care about anything else,” explained Bill Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the non-partisan non-profit Brookings Institution. “My sense is he’s delighted to have Bondi and Gabbard in a bit of trouble, so they work harder to please him.”
To be sure, Trump loves a supplicant cast who are all doing everything possible to make him happy, even if it means that they put themselves at personal risk. This is true of everyone, but one gets the sense that, for Trump, it’s especially true in the case of two relatively attractive women – Bondi and Gabbard. You just know that he loves them groveling. To be sure, both of these women deserve their fate, but even they shouldn’t be expected to grossly suck-up as women in front of a man just for his pleasure.
And yet Clift is also discerning enough to note that blind loyalty has never been enough; this is especially true when the boss is in trouble. Thus it is that Bondi has something in common with Peter Hegseth, both may well be short-timers.
Still, the former Fox anchor is regarded by most seasoned observers to be a short-timer at the Defense Department. It’s the least well-kept secret in Washington. And it’s not a surprise that NBC News reported Hegseth recently sounded out sources in Tennessee, where he currently lives, about potentially running for governor there, suggesting he might be looking for an off-ramp from a job he never should have had in the first place.
In other words, he’ll get to fail upwards. Bondi and Gabbard, should they fail to get Trump out of the scrape he’s in, won’t be so lucky to waltz out the door with the commander-in-chief’s blessing.
A mistake so big that even Trump cannot provide a shield? Well, that certainly fits Hegseth, who arguably has already made that mistake; it was just too soon, too early, to start firing people lest it rub off on Trump. But Bondi’s position is even less tenable in that this scandal falls directly back on Trump, and he is the one in maximum trouble. As noted above, that is precisely when everyone is in jeopardy.
Very few people have Clift’s experience in Washington, and so her observations should be taken damned seriously. But there is room to question how firing Bondi would do anything but make the situation less manageable. What would be the underlying rationale? That she bungled the Epstein matter? How so? She didn’t release the files? Trump could demand such today, and they’d have to come out. Moreover, one has to wonder what it is that the replacement is expected to do differently? Release the files? See the previous sentence. Suppress the files? See what’s happening now. It wouldn’t be an easy patch job.
But given Trump’s history, it does seem to be an all-too-real possibility. Despite the fact that readers will undoubtedly get irate in comments for noting this, it’s virtually irrefutable that Bondi was actually close to qualified for the appointment as former Attorney General for Florida, a major major state. What of a possible replacement? Remember that Trump first nominated Matt Gaetz and then put Kash Patel in as head of the FBI. It is possible that Trump could take a quasi-capable Bondi, put her on the street, then lift up someone even less qualified for the job.
Good. The single last thing anyone wants is someone competent and experienced enough to actually carry out every Project 2025 aspiration. We are far better off if Bondi is gone and the Department of Justice is left to almost collapse under its own weight. Better it do next to nothing than do all that may be planned.
Speaking of planning, it can be said with certainty that no one in the administration planned for the Epstein matter to catch fire, and that, right there, is likely the major oversight occurring in this administration. Then again, there was fck all they could do about it. Having the boss scattered about the Epstein files is not easily smoothed out in any context, under anyone.
There is no more deserving crowd. Even though it’s possible that, under the exact circumstances before us, Bondi doesn’t deserve to be terminated. Still, it’s not like tears will be shed if she’s done.
It could happen. Keep an eye out.
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Ahhh…arrogance and ignorance…the surest way to end up in a box canyon.
On the question of whether Trump can prevail over the Epstein factor, we need to be wary of a kind media bias that has been with us a very long time. To explain this, I will evoke three factors: the “man bites dog” imperative in journalism; journalistic sensationalism, now also known as “clickbait”; and in-group bias. The “man bites dog” imperative is simply this: when a man is bitten by a dog, that is rarely reported. Why? Because it happens all the time, and what happens all the time is not ia “story.” But if a dog is bitten by a man, that is so weird — it’s a story! “Sensationalism” is just a broader term: anything people find strange, disquieting, bizarre, disgusting, etc., sells papers; and normal behavior does not. For those two reasons, the media have given Trump and his party disproportionate coverage from day one — the escalator entry at Trump Tower and the stupid speech about Mexicans — and this gives them a leg up over normal people. Anything Trump or his followers do or say, no matter how trivial or stupid, gets covered. This creates a perverse incentive, a Pavlovian reinforcement-feedback loop that keeps them to getting stupider, nastier, and more disgusting. It also gives them free advertising. And it makes them appear extremely dynamic despite having no coherent program other than power and publicity itself, and all their opponents as being very boring because their doings and opinions do not get covered. (Negative reinforcement.)
Now the issue at hand is this: who actually supports Trump after they find out not merely that he was deeply involved with Epstein for many years, but what this actually means? Or for shorthand, as it becomes more and more of a certainty that Trump’s name is “all over the Epstein files.” According to the above, if somebody still supports Trump even under these circumstances, when those who continue supporting Trump run into the same social opporobrium Trump and Epstein themselves do, i.e. for supporting pedophilia — well that IS the story, isn’t it? It’s weird and disgusitng — it’s “Man bites dog.” Since the media are fixated on Trump supporters rather than those who may be drifting away, the loyalists seem omnipresent no matter what happens. As a result, if their number were actually shrinking this would hardly be noticed, because the ones who remain, no matter how few, are still the big story, and will get bigger as they get worse and worse They become still more vehement, because they are the in-group and everybody else is the out-group. Of course the media continues to flock to them for the interviews and the sound bites. Not to mention that the Trump policies benefit the ultra-rich. In short, if Trump were losing support, would anybody notice? And vice-versa, if his opponents were gaining strength, wouldn’t that also hard to notice? But that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
I’m doubting that she ever had any principles or ethics, but whatever remnants she may have had were certainly jettisoned when she decided to prostrate herself before Agent Orange. I loathe the woman personally, but isn’t there an element of wilful denial in blaming her specifically for the direction of the DOJ since she took over when she has clearly been doing Cheeto’s bidding?
I suppose they need an out,
and…
cultists will be cultists.