Pam Bondi Has Hit Peak Kamala Harris-Level Cringe

There's no sugarcoating this one. AG Bondi blew it, bigly.

If you missed Pam Bondi’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, congratulations. Your blood pressure is likely in a healthier range than mine. Picture a PTA meeting gone feral—but throw in some C-SPAN cameras and a stock market update—and you’ll have a decent idea of how the more than four-hour fiasco went down.

I wanted Bondi to walk into that hearing and own the room. I wanted her to be articulate. Surgical. Unflappable. I wanted Democrats to grandstand, Republicans to offer measured head-bobs, and AG Blondie to calmly neutralize the situation like a Navy SEAL disarming a Nerf gun.

Instead, she brought TDS and the Dow.

Look, I like a soaring stock market as much as the next gal with a modest retirement account. I’ll take a record-smashing Nasdaq over thirteen-dollar eggs any day of the week. Who doesn’t love an economic boom? But the topic was the Epstein files. When you are the Attorney General of the United States being grilled about child trafficking, grotesque sexual abuse, powerful people committing horrific crimes and lying about any involvement at all, all under more public scrutiny than a presidential tax return—and your rebuttal is “The Dow is over 50,000 right now!”—that is not the flex you think it is.

It’s the rhetorical equivalent of being asked, “Where were you on the night of January 11?” and responding with “I can bench press one-eighty.”

Democrats came in hot. They accused Bondi of protecting pedophiles. They charged her with lying under oath. They brought victims to sit behind her. They waved binders. They demanded apologies. This was not going to be a tea party. Everyone knew that. But instead of coolly dismantling the accusations point by point, Bondi went full hysterical-hyena mode. It felt less like a DOJ oversight hearing and more like a Real Housewives reunion special, minus the champagne flutes.

When pressed on the lack of indictments, Bondi rambled like a petulant prepubescent trying to run out the clock and then proceeded to call Representative Jamie Raskin a “loser lawyer.” (Yes, that happened. Feel free to cringe.) When Representative Jerry Nadler pushed her further, noting that the number of indictments was zero, she pivoted, inexplicably, to recent market gains. When Representative Thomas Massie—a Republican—criticized egregious redactions in the files as well as the DOJ’s releasing of the victims’ names after being expressly ordered not to, she accused him of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

MASSIE: “How is it that you failed so spectacularly at your most important job?”
BONDI: “You know what? You’re ugly and your mama dresses you funny.”

It was painful.

It was so bad, in fact, that Comedy Central immediately turned the worst bits into a lowlight reel.

I’m not saying Democrats were saints. They were not. They were combative. They were dramatic. They were clearly salivating at the opportunity to paint the botched file release as a cover-up. They baited, berated, and belittled her. But this was an oversight hearing. Oversight hearings are not supposed to resemble cage matches. They are supposed to look like adults asking questions and other adults answering them.

At one excruciating point, Representative Becca Balint asked flatly whether President Trump was aware of Howard Lutnick’s Epstein connections when he appointed him Secretary of Commerce. It was a simple yes/no question. Bondi equivocated; Balint exploded.

“Oh for goodness’ sake, this is pathetic,” Balint shouted. “I am not asking trick questions here! The American people have a right to know the answers to this. These are senior officials in the Trump administration. This is not a game, secretary.”

Bondi replied haughtily, “I’m Attorney General.”

Balint fired back, “My apologies. I couldn’t tell.”

And here’s the really uncomfortable part: Bondi’s refusal to answer straightforward questions about releases, redactions, or her department’s perpetually “active” investigations (that apparently cannot be described, defined, or detected) doesn’t just frustrate Democrats. It frustrates everyone—or at least, the sane, uncompromised chunk of the population who wants the entire Epstein network exposed, the victims protected, and every last guilty party prosecuted—regardless of party affiliation—promptly and with maximum statutory enthusiasm, if it’s not too much to ask.

The optics were brutal. Survivors standing silently in the background while Bondi flipped through what one congressman derided as a “burn book”—a literal folder filled with canned insults to sling at whatever congressperson was currently grilling her—was not a good look. Dismissing difficult questions as “theatrics” might play well in certain corners of cable news, but to the millions of Average Joes and Jennas watching and wanting answers and accountability, it read as painfully, hideously, undeniably evasive.

At the risk of overstating the obvious, the Epstein files are not just another partisan food fight. They are radioactive for a reason. The public has spent years waiting for names that never materialize, listening to promises of transparency that dissolve on contact, and watching elite heavyweights orbit the scandal without ever actually being pulled into its gravity. We’ve endured press conferences full of solemn vows, document dumps that read like blackout poetry, and whispers of co-conspirators being silenced like a dog with a spray bottle.

People on the right want answers. People on the left want answers. People without a political bone in their bodies want answers. The one thing no one wants is another empty round of “Accountability is coming! Just not today.”

Despite rumors that Trump considers Bondi “weak and ineffective,” yesterday the president praised her “fantastic” performance during the heated hearing. Because of course he did. She was him with better hair on that stand. (Other notable quotes from his Truth Social post included “Republican Loser,” “SLIMEBALL Democrats,” and “Sanctimonious RINO Congressman,” because name-calling is clearly how Team Trump defines “winning” these days. SMH.)

“Nobody cared about Epstein when he was alive,” Trump ranted, “they only cared about him when they thought he could create Political Harm to a very popular President who has brought our Country back from the brink of extinction, and very quickly, at that! In fact, this attempt by the Democrats to take away attention from tremendous Republican SUCCESS is backfiring badly.”

He may be right. (Although if someone would instruct him in the Proper Use of Initial Caps™, that’d be great.) Democrats had years to expose Epstein’s cronies when they were pulling the strings, and somehow not a single soul thought to peek into that more than six-million-page file. And sure, the left would love nothing more than to turn this into a midterm bloodbath. Politics is politics. That’s the game.

But this isn’t a popularity problem. It’s a credibility problem. And credibility doesn’t care which party bungled it first. Unfortunately, no amount of finger-pointing, whatabouting, or stock-market chest-thumping can drown out the sound of millions of citizens asking the same questions—who’s guilty, who knew, and who’s still bending over backwards to cover it up?

Actually me. (source @christianlcooper on Instagram)

To be fair—because fairness still matters—this is the first administration in decades that has even acknowledged the Epstein scandal without pretending it was a weird Florida spa misunderstanding. Yes, they’ve fumbled it. They’ve overpromised and underdelivered. They’ve backpedaled, deflected, and played an embarrassing game of possum. But they are, in fact, releasing files. Slowly? Painfully so. Imperfectly? Absolutely. Incompetently? You can say that again. But files are coming out. That counts for something… but it doesn’t excuse lying, lashing out, or stonewalling.

A PSA to Pam Bondi: if Republicans want to be the party of law and order, they’re (read: you’re) going to need to learn to respect both.

Am I being dramatic or was it as bad as I think it was? LMK in the comments!

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