Todd Blanche Broke His Promise to the Senate
Bulwark Takes
The Bulwark
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2026
⏱️ 15 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Will Saletan takes on Todd Blanche’s Sunday show appearances, where Trump’s former lawyer—now running the Justice Department—defends mass deportations, self-issued warrants, foreign money flowing to Trump, and openly political prosecutions, despite promising the Senate none of this would happen.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Will Salatan from The Bullwork. So every week, some poor flunky and the Trump administration |
| 0:06.7 | gets sent out on the Sunday talk shows to lie about whatever is the latest corrupt thing |
| 0:14.8 | Trump has done. So today, that flunky is Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general. Blanche was literally Donald Trump's lawyer |
| 0:25.5 | in the criminal cases against Trump. And so Trump, who was now a convicted criminal, |
| 0:32.2 | rewarded Blanche by putting him in charge of the Justice Department. |
| 0:44.0 | And now Blanche is on TV, doing what he's always done, which is to lie on Trump's behalf. |
| 0:48.0 | So I'm going to show you two interviews Blanche did today. The first one was on ABC. |
| 0:50.9 | Let's start with a question from the host, George Stephanopoulos, about Trump's rounding up |
| 0:57.4 | and deporting illegal immigrants who have no criminal records. |
| 1:02.4 | President said he was going to prioritize those who had criminal records, but about 70% at least |
| 1:08.2 | of those who have been detained don't have criminal records. |
| 1:14.6 | Well, just hang on. The fact that they're here illegally is a crime. And so when you say they don't have criminal records, they are, by their presence being here without status, |
| 1:19.6 | having come into this country illegally or overstayed illegally, that is a crime. |
| 1:24.6 | Huh. So when Trump ran for president, he said, don't worry, we're not going |
| 1:31.2 | to go after people who came here 15, 20 years ago, and they've been, you know, living and working in |
| 1:37.7 | the community. No, Trump said, we're just going to go after the dangerous criminals. And then when it turns out that Trump lied and that the vast majority of the people he's rounding up |
| 1:50.8 | are not dangerous criminals, Blanche changes the story and says, they're all criminals because they're all here illegally. |
| 2:00.2 | So Trump lied, and now Blanche is changing the definition to pretend that Trump didn't lie. |
| 2:08.1 | Okay, next, here is Stephanopoulos asking about a little boy, not a criminal, a little boy, |
| 2:15.9 | who got picked up and hauled away by ICE. |
| 2:19.3 | We have some video right now showing Leon Ramos, that five-year-old boy who was detained by ICE in Minnesota, being released. |
| 2:25.3 | Today, he's on his way back home to Minnesota after a judge ordered him released. |
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