Nearly six weeks into her tenure, Attorney General Pam Bondi finds herself in the unenviable position of being the sole Trump Cabinet member absorbing consistent political heat from critics on both the left — who are decrying cuts to the nation’s top law enforcement agency — and on the right — who remain furious about her failure to deliver on one of their great white whales: The Jeffrey Epstein files.
By all indications, Bondi’s position remains secure with President Donald Trump, who called her “fantastic” on Thursday and gave her a glowing review during a visit to the Justice Department Friday. The longer-term question is how much more patience and grace Trump’s base will grant Bondi, who already bears scars as the central figure in arguably the administration’s earliest blunder.
“She’s not typically rolling with people like us,” said Steve Deace, a host on Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV network who built a national following through his Christian-rooted conservative commentary in Iowa. “I think she got caught, frankly, playing a role that maybe she doesn’t sincerely understand, believe in, and got way over her skis.”
Seated at the center of his assembled four-person panel, Beck had concluded the nation’s top prosecutor was out of step with Trump’s Cabinet and uncoordinated with a surprisingly cohesive White House staff. What else, he wondered, could explain botching a high-profile promise to the party’s base to release never-before-seen flight logs, names and other potentially incriminating details about those who associated with Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail cell while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
