(transcript)
JONATHAN ALTER:
Hi, I’m Jonathan Alter of Old Goats.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
And I’m Julian Zelizer from The Long View.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
So this week, as soon as the news broke that Attorney General Pam Bondi was no longer going to be with the administration, that President Trump was getting rid of her, my mind went back not that far in history. Back to 2018, when President Trump was in his first term, after the midterm elections, which went poorly for the Republicans. The news came that a letter of resignation, at the request of President Trump, had come from Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions had been a very conservative congressman from Alabama, a senator, a supporter of Trump, but he had recused himself when the investigation opened up into Russia under Robert Mueller, who recently passed away. So he had been a very controversial figure, and most people interpreted this as Trump wanting to gain more control over the investigation.
And so I was thinking about how do we think of that in the first term, vis-à-vis where President Trump is today and Bondi.
JONATHAN ALTER:
Well, you know, Trump has been consistent in one area. He wants the attorney general to be his personal lawyer. In the first term, that involved defending him against accusations, defending him against possible scandals. That’s why he fired Sessions, because Sessions was not defending him. By bringing in a special counsel, he was saying, well, let the investigation take its course. He was doing the right thing, even though there was a lot that was wrong about Jeff Sessions. In that case, he was doing the right thing that the attorney general is supposed to do, by statute, by tradition, and everything else. Trump fired him for it.
This time, it wasn’t about Pam Bondi not defending him enough. She was doing that quite aggressively on Capitol Hill. It was about her not seeking enough retribution against his enemies. So in the first term he wanted his AG to be a watchdog. This time he wants his AG to be an attack dog. And when she wasn’t doing it effectively enough, she did try to prosecute people like Letitia James and others. She went after everybody that Trump wanted her to go after, all of his critics. But it wasn’t working. These cases were getting thrown out of court.
And so now I think he’ll at least try to get an attorney general who will revive those cases, but he’s not going to get anywhere because these cases are bullshit.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
From watchdogs to attack dogs, Jon, I think is a great way to capture the shift in how Trump is trying to use the legal system, law and order. I think that was an astute insight.
Anyway, thanks everyone for joining us, and we’ll talk again next week.
