Why Pam Bondi Is the Attorney General of Trump’s Dreams
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.2 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 3 September 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
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Summary
The New Yorker contributing writer Ruth Marcus joins the guest host and staff writer Clare Malone to discuss Marcus’s recent profile of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. They talk about Bondi’s political origins and her unprecedented reshaping of the Justice Department, and how she delivers on President Trump’s desire to use the legal system for revenge and retribution. They also touch on Bondi’s mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, which has drawn the ire of both Democratic politicians and core parts of the President’s base.
This week’s reading:
- “Pam Bondi’s Power Play,” by Ruth Marcus
- “Texas Democrats’ Weapons of the Weak,” by Rachel Monroe
- “Do State Referendums on Abortion Work?,” by Peter Slevin
- “Why Don’t We Take Nuclear Weapons Seriously?,” by Rivka Galchen
- “How Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,’s Anti-Vax Agenda Is Infecting America,” by Isaac Chotiner
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, Ruth. |
| 0:08.1 | Hi. |
| 0:09.1 | There are so many great details in your profile on Pam Bondi, and I recommend everyone read the whole thing. |
| 0:14.9 | The Daily Mail has aggregated it not once, but twice. |
| 0:18.3 | But if you had to pick one detail that best explains who she is as a political |
| 0:21.6 | figure and as an attorney general, what would it be? You know, I think it would be a quote from her |
| 0:27.8 | chief of staff, Chad Mazzle. And I asked him what the difference was between this Bondi Justice |
| 0:35.3 | Department and the Justice Department in the first Trump administration. |
| 0:39.3 | And he said to me, quote, the handcuffs are off. In season two, he said, the handcuffs are off. |
| 0:48.0 | And we can do everything the president wants us to do and everything Pam wants us to do. |
| 0:54.0 | And I thought that was true in terms of the way |
| 0:58.9 | they conceive of their power and chilling. That's Ruth Marcus, who recently wrote a piece |
| 1:08.6 | for The New Yorker about Pam Bondi, Donald Trump's |
| 1:11.1 | new Attorney General. In just seven months, Bondi has presided over the most convulsive transition |
| 1:16.4 | at the Justice Department since Watergate, from tearing down portraits of Joe Biden and Merrick |
| 1:21.1 | Garland and bragging about it on Fox News, to overseeing purges of career staff on a scale |
| 1:26.3 | that many say is unprecedented. |
| 1:28.6 | Her defenders argue she's simply giving Trump what he wants, |
| 1:31.5 | an attorney general fully aligned with him. |
| 1:34.1 | But her critics warn, she's turned the DOJ into a pure instrument of revenge. |
| 1:38.3 | I wanted to talk with Ruth about what makes Bondi different from any other attorney general, |
| 1:42.4 | why her missteps over the Jeffrey Epstein case |
... |
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