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Chapter 1: What insights did Pam Bondi's testimony reveal about the Republican Party?
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I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times Opinion. And this week, I am coming to you from beautiful Austin, Texas, where I am wallowing in the very juicy Senate race that's going on in the state. But do not fear. I still have with me my usual partners in crime, columnists David French and Jamel Bowie. Guys, welcome. How's it going?
Michelle, hot take on calling Austin beautiful. What?
Why the hate?
Why the hate, David? I've never figured out why Austin took off before Nashville, when Nashville is objectively the superior city to Austin. But that's just a me thing. That's just a me thing.
I got no beef with Nashville. I went to school there. I love it. So we're just going to let that slide. It's like there's room for both, David. There's room for both. Jamel?
Hello. I have no opinions on either Nashville or Austin. Parts of the country I visited, and they're fine, in my opinion. He is overwhelming us with his passion. There are other places that I would rather go. And you may notice I'm losing my voice a little bit. So apologies if I start cracking like a 13-year-old.
It's going to just make you sound very emotional for today, which is going to really work with our topics. As listeners are all too aware, because in part, we keep reminding them, this is a midterm election year.
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Chapter 2: How are emerging themes shaping the midterm elections for both parties?
Others like Andy McCarthy of National Review is running a really remarkable series on Trump corruption. And all of these things are coming up and bubbling up. And others are taking on members of his administration in ways. But again, it's still the same pattern. The same pattern is Trump is being failed. It is Pam Bondi, you're botching the Epstein release.
It's Pam Bondi, you're doing this wrong. Pam Bondi, you're doing that wrong. When the bottom line is, Pam Bondi would not be doing any of this stuff but for her boss. And the frustration, though, that she's experiencing, I think, is she's doing everything that Trump wants her to do And it's falling apart because what Trump wants her to do is crazy.
Trying to indict six members of Congress, Democratic members of Congress, over an ad that just repeats some of the messaging in the Department of Defense Law of War Manual. What is she going to do next? Indict the authors of the DOD Law of War Manual for saying there are circumstances where unlawful orders must be disobeyed? Don't challenge.
Is she going to indict Pete Hegseth, who said the same thing several years ago? I mean... It's a remarkable development, and I think that it was just so clearly illuminating to people. It was just right there how craven and ridiculous it all gets.
Chapter 3: How did the House Judiciary Committee react to Bondi's performance?
Can I add two things? One comment, and I'll add two things. One comment is that it is very funny to see the kind of like good czar, bad boy-ar dynamic happening, I think, among commentators. It's sort of a classic thing. Rationalization for bad authoritarian governance, which is a bit of a redundant authoritarian governance, is bad as a matter of course, but it's just funny to see.
The two comments I wanted to make is, one, David, you said that, you know, Trump puts your job on one side and your morality and so on and so forth, the other side. And this gets back to what I said a little earlier, which is, I mean, this is one of the things about this administration is that he's selected for people whose sense of morality in the first place is somewhat deficient, right?
Like Pam Bondi, you know, not known for running sort of like a clean AG office in Florida, right? Like not known for being a super scrupulous person, right? So she's like primed to do exactly what Trump wants you to do. And the second thing, third thing total is and this is my hobby horse, as you guys know, yours to an extent, too, as well, David.
To me, this just lays bare the insanity of the idea that the entire executive branch must follow the political priorities of the president. Right. Like. DOJ independence wasn't just something that emerged to like frustrate the aspirations of strong executives. It serves a practical purpose.
And the practical purpose is that when you're asking the attorney general to do things like prosecute members of Congress, you're asking the attorney general to do things like investigate crimes. the spouses of people killed by your government, as was the case after Renee Goode was killed.
What will happen is that the good faith, highly competent, patriotic prosecutors that work for you, they'll quit. They don't wanna do that. They wanna do the thing that they signed up to do, which was like enforce the law and try to bring some measure of justice to people who have been victims. And so what you're seeing in the DOJ and in offices like in Minnesota is like an exodus of attorneys.
And so not only is Trump asking Bondi to do insane things and she's trying to do them, but in trying to do them, she's hollowing out the DOJ and rendering it unable to do its actual job. And I think you can see this everywhere, like everywhere that happens.
The Supreme Court in particular has essentially given the sanction to this notion of a unitary executive whose job isn't to execute the will of Congress, but to be able to bend the executive branch in service of their political agenda. Everywhere that touches, you see dysfunction. And I don't think it's just because Trump.
I think it's because the very notion is actually at odds with any idea of good governance.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Bondi's testimony for Trump's presidency?
Yeah, so Jasmine Crockett, just to be clear, Jasmine Crockett and James Tallarico on the Democratic side. Yes. Nobody has a scandal, and nobody has gone super nuclear on the other at this point.
Right. So it really is putting before Democratic primary voters. These are two very different approaches. Both of these politicians are very good representations of these two different approaches. And which one do you want? And to me, I'm going to be so fascinated to see the results of that because it is a kind of a race that's untainted. Wow, a race untainted by scandal?
I know, go figure.
Who's ever heard of such a thing? So I think that's going to be very, very interesting. But it is absolutely the case that a lot of the establishment that has been trying to rise up to defend sort of American institutions has its own abundant flaws.
And I do think, you know, if I was going to talk about a politician, just to sort of show the kind of person who maybe, and Jamel and you guys can tell me this more, you know, this is just me talking out loud. Mark Kelly would say, nobody would say he hasn't fought enough. you know, they tried to indict him.
You know, he has fought hard against the Trump administration, yet he's not in the, you know, most progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Is that a profile that people would really like? I don't know. I don't know. It's going to be interesting to find this out.
Some of this is just going to be hard to answer. Like, you know, if there's a Democratic trifecta in 2029, I think the big political question is going to be, Does the Democratic Party push forward on its substantive agenda or does it engage basically in like a cleanup operation? I think American politics is quite bad at accountability. We don't like the idea of dwelling on the past.
You know, readers of mine will know that I'm a big like Lincoln head. And this is I mean, Lincoln is chosen as the Republican nominee in 1860. In part because everyone's like, well, he's just he's like a moderate guy. He's a moderate anti-slavery guy. And he might be easily manipulable by, you know, a William Seward or these other people who will be in the cabinet.
And we can trust that he won't go too far afield. And no one at the time could really sense Lincoln's own kind of like iron will. Right. So when secession starts to happen. You have. Even Seward, he was like, maybe we should make some concessions here. We don't want secession. And Lincoln is almost, not alone, but close to being one of the handful of people who is like, no, let them secede.
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