Trump AG Pam Bondi is Sticking To Safe Space Fox News Hits — Time To Stop Hiding
Screenshot via Fox News.
Anthony Coley served as head of public affairs at the U.S. Justice Department during the first two years of the Biden Administration. He is now an NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC contributor.
It’s like clockwork: At least once a week, every week, Attorney General Pam Bondi appears exclusively on Fox networks to speak directly to the MAGA faithful and to President Donald Trump, an avid watcher.
These exclusive appearances come at the expense of all other news organizations. Not once in seven weeks has the attorney general sat for a TV interview with a non-Fox network. Think about that: the nation’s attorney general – sworn to protect and defend all of us – only gives TV interviews to partisan TV hosts.
I guess I should give her credit. At least she’s not window-dressing or even trying to pretend to be an attorney general representing the country writ large. But this intentional avoidance of mainstream media, and the vast audience it still attracts, is a disservice to the public. Her Fox-only engagement also sends a signal of weakness – it says the nation’s top cop is not able to handle a few minutes of questions from non-partisan news anchors.
While Bondi has held a few press conferences, her Fox-only TV strategy is an anomaly within the Trump orbit. Throughout his first term, and since his most recent election, even Trump understood the value of sitting for interviews with mainstream news organizations, in addition to Fox networks.
Her cabinet colleagues are certainly out there. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has appeared three times on Sunday news shows since his confirmation. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been on both CBS’s Face the Nation and NBC’s Meet the Press; for almost 45 minutes this month, he faced off with CNBC’s top anchors to try to calm jittery markets. Even puppy-killer
Back on Fox networks, Bondi has talked a tough, if misleading, game in her dozen-plus prime-time, dayside, and weekend interviews. She frequently mentions border security and “making America safe again” but ignores the fact that violent crime is near historic lows and the country’s border would be even more secure now had Trump not killed the toughest immigration reform bill in a generation. (He preferred instead to campaign on the issue than allow the bipartisan compromise brokered in the Senate to be fixed on Joe Biden’s watch.) Her strident language in these interviews is not just unbecoming of the office; it’s “nakedly partisan,” as NBC News has described it.
But talking tough in friendly forum doesn’t make you an effective attorney general – it means you memorized and repeated red meat phrases that resonate with your audience and your boss. It might also make Stephen Miller happy. The MAGA enthusiast and deputy White House chief of staff works regularly with the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs to shape messaging strategy, according to CNN.
To be fair, I understand why Bondi appears on Fox so often: she’s determined to not meet the fate of Trump’s first two attorney generals. Bill Barr rightly refused to go along with Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen. And Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, appropriately recused himself from overseeing DOJ’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Barr’s actions were right on the facts and the law, and Session’s stance was consistent with DOJ internal policy and its post-Watergate norms. Trump was furious at both men, staunch conservatives he hand-picked for the job. They lost his confidence and that of the MAGA faithful.
With this attorney general, Trump has broken the mold. Pam Bondi is a certified MAGA warrior, someone who ignores facts and law, as she did in 2020, traveling to Pennsylvania after the election and trumpeting lies about “fake ballots” and “evidence of cheating.”
With that background, it should come as no surprise that – above all – Bondi is mostly concerned about staying in Trump’s good graces. But this deliberate snubbing of the mainstream media, and the accountability that entails, is not sustainable. It’s out of step with her cabinet colleagues as well as her boss’s approach to media engagement.
So, Madame Attorney General, let’s turn the page: This week, it’s time to face the nation and meet the press, literally.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
