(C) Common Dreams
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One Trump Nominee Has Mastered the Art of Pretending It’s All OK [1]

['Dahlia Lithwick', 'Mark Joseph Stern']

Date: 2025-01-15 20:30:36+00:00

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As measured by the Pete Hegseth standard (“how many pushups can you do” without being alleged to have gotten hammered at work, or to have committed sexual assault), Pam Bondi acquitted herself coolly and almost masterfully at her confirmation hearings. The main takeaway from her performance, though: If an insurrection happens in a forest, and Pam Bondi isn’t there to hear it, did it really happen? This was Bondi’s recurring response to the most horrifying aspects of her own record and the record of the president who appointed her: She heard no evil, and certainly saw none. It is thus scurrilous gotcha-ism to ask her to discuss it.

Did she hear Donald Trump’s telephone call to Georgia’s secretary of state asking him to find more votes? No, she never listened to it. Did she hear Trump’s comments about prosecuting Liz Cheney? She never heard that. Does she know about Trump’s pledge to prosecute Jack Smith? She does not. His threat to go after Merrick Garland? No idea. What does she think of Kash Patel’s much-vaunted enemies list? Oh. Did he say that on TV? Patel’s threats to shutter the FBI? She doesn’t know. Pardons for those convicted for the Jan. 6 insurrection? She dare not judge a matter that may come before her. And did Trump lose the 2020 election? Biden is the president. No really, did Trump win the 2020 election? She saw some STUFF on the ground in Pennsylvania. You have NO idea. What does she know beyond a shadow of a doubt? There was a “peaceful transition” after the 2020 election.

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The thing about this team of Trump 2.0 enthusiasts? Their almost uncanny toolbox of denial techniques—Hegseth’s “anonymous smears” and Bondi’s “wait, Trump said what now?”—reveals the game here: Treat everything Donald Trump has said about what he plans to do with the Justice Department, the FBI, the military, and the police as the adorable rantings of someone’s crazy uncle, and treat everything reported in the press, ever, as a demonstrable lie. Because it was in the press. Senate Democrats, who have done an admirable job of pointing out that Bondi has been an unreconstructed shill for Trump, don’t quite seem to understand that the things they ask about and the media reports that they quote bounce off the nominee as de facto falsehoods.

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Asked by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse about her famous quote about “prosecuting the prosecutors,” Bondi was emphatic. Read in its entirety, her quote needed to be placed in its true context: “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones,” Bondi had explained on Fox News last year. It’s only the “bad ones” who will be prosecuted, she soothed at her hearing. What’s a bad prosecutor? Unclear. We shall let the crazy uncle decide.

What is striking about this new set of confirmation hearings, and those that will doubtless follow, is that the sole determinant for an appointment in 2025 is loyalty to Trump. Not to the GOP. Not to conservative legal values. Not to some inchoate theory of separation of powers or to an old-school vision or to the unitary executive. The unitary executive is Trump. To be eligible to serve in Donald Trump’s Cabinet one needs to have shown fealty to Donald Trump. Which means that during these hearings one needs to mouth platitudes about institutions and theories of justice and independence and liberty and justice for all, and rape crisis centers at the border, without ever disavowing a single word spoken by Donald J. Trump, or acknowledging his activities to set aside the last election, or statements made by his loyalists, or statements made by oneself in order to curry favor. One is simultaneously auditioning for just one person and also saying whatever needs to be said in order to prove that nothing Donald Trump has ever said or done is real, or true, or salient. Bondi happens to be superb at this. By the end of the afternoon Senate Democrats seem to be conceding that justice and liberty and independence are the name of the game. Bondi still believes Trump won in 2020 and that Biden is the president. It’s terrifying to witness.

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[1] Url: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/01/pam-bondi-hearings-trump-attorney-general-lies.html

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