Pam Bondi, American Vandal

The Attorney General trashed a Senate hearing, but only soiled herself.

If there is a defining MAGA facial expression, it’s the sneer. At the slightest disagreement, the truest-bluest, die-hard believers in Trump will snap their faces into a sneer. You can actually hear the MAGA sneer, too, as ordinary conversations about, say, the latest episode of Matlock or Taylor Swift’s new album disintegrate into acid indictments of All Things Not MAGA. It’s exhausting. Can we not just talk?

But it’s all part of the MAGA shtick, and it is meant to exhaust you, grind you down, and send you a message. We are the true and superior Americans, they are telling us with that sneer, and you must submit to our superiority.

That sneer was Attorney General Pam Bondi’s singular message to Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and to anyone else across America who was watching the panel’s oversight hearing and wasn’t in 1000 percent agreement with her. It was a performance unlike anything seen in a congressional hearing since Roy Cohn tried to discredit the United States Army on behalf of Senator Joe McCarthy. Bondi was actually nastier than Cohn—and that’s saying something.

If you missed it, a few moments will suffice to communicate the venomous contempt Bondi spat at the Democrats—and the nation—for hours. Just click on the links.

There was her exchange with Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who questioned the Attorney General about a potential conflict-of-interest with her former law firm, and in response got a canned, “gotcha” counterattack laced with high dudgeon—here.

Mild-mannered Vermont Senator Peter Welch tried to ask Bondi about the $50,000 cash bribe Border Czar Tom Homan took, not knowing it was an FBI sting. The DOJ dropped the investigation altogether, but Senator Welch had a simple question: Where did the money go? Watch how Bondi treated the man who represents one of the 50 sovereign states of the Union—here.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island asked about reports that the FBI has incriminating photos in the Epstein files of Donald Trump with half-naked young women. Another canned gotcha response; but tone is key in this one—here

And on and on it went. If you watched even a few minutes, and if you have any respect for the institutions of our democracy and a memory of how the business of our nation, even through the most bitter partisan fights, was once conducted, it was—I was going to say “shocking.” But of course it wasn’t. This is what a truly Trumpist administration is. That’s just depressing.

I’m actually quite a conservative when it comes to decorum and decency in the proceedings of our government. You know the reason for all the “my distinguished colleague” stuff, all the “Mr. Chairman, point of order?” requests, and all the unwritten rules of this republic’s conduct of its affairs? The etiquette of the institutions of our representative government is there to make disagreements on critical issues more civil, and thus more open to actual, productive argument and compromise, or if not compromise, peaceable acceptance of whatever resolution is achieved. It’s the grease in the gears of democratic self-government. Good public servants across this country understand that. Hell, most grown-ups understand that.

But not Pam Bondi. And not so many of her colleagues in the Trump administration. Bondi gleefully trashed that hearing and vandalized that old, fuddy-duddy Senate etiquette. It was a sneering, note-perfect performance of Trumpism. I’m sure the man himself appreciated it.

Did it succeed, though? There was a real problem in her hours-long harangue. Whenever people try to be Trump, they fail. He gets away with it; they don’t. So here’s the good news: Pam Bondi failed. Bigly. In two ways.

First, watch one more clip. Senator Adam Schiff of California questioned the Attorney General towards the end of the hearing, and he reviewed all of the times during the course of the morning that Bondi refused to answer simple questions from Democratic senators—here is the end of that exchange; watch Bondi melt down.

Senator Schiff made her realize something. By spitting venom at the Democrats throughout the hearing instead of answering their questions—about Trump in the Epstein files, about Tom Homan and a bag full of cash, about her own ethics—she looked like she was desperate to cover up wrongdoing. You can see it dawn on her as Schiff keeps adding to the litany of unanswered questions, and you can sense her panic.

Normal people might start wondering—why is she dodging so much? And maybe they wonder—what about Tom Homan and that bag of cash? And Trump and those photos?

Normal people. Remember them? Well, we’re still out here, you and me and tens of millions more. And this is the second way Pam Bondi failed. Normal, decent people don’t want what Pam Bondi showed them yesterday. She was awful. Right? I mean, I’ll assume you are normal. Decent. How does that sneering, snapping awful lady make you feel? Multiply that by tens of millions. Maybe more.

Americans haven’t changed that much, for all our desperate political disagreements. We are still a decent, middle-class, middle-temperament, middle-of-the-road nation. Pam Bondi doesn’t get that. She came into that hearing room determined to trash the Democrats, and all that old, stupid etiquette. When she left, it turns out, all she had done was soil herself.