Rumors began swirling late Wednesday that President Donald Trump was considering firing Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The New York Times broke the story that the AG’s days in the Trump administration were numbered due to the president reportedly being upset at her handling of the Epstein Files and her lack of aggressiveness in going after his political enemies like New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.
The report was quickly confirmed by multiple news outlets and, by Thursday afternoon, Trump had announced Bondi would be moving to the private sector and replaced, on an interim basis, by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
But Bondi wasn’t the only Cabinet member said to be on the hot seat. Reports suggest President Trump might also be considering replacing Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard. And on Thursday’s show, Megyn was joined by Sean Davis, CEO of The Federalist, and Sohrab Ahmari, U.S. editor of UnHerd, to discuss the shakeups.
Bondi Fired
President Trump took to Truth Social Thursday afternoon to confirm the reports that Bondi was being replaced. He called her “a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend,” who “faithfully served” and “did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900.”
Contrary to reports that said Bondi may be moved to another role in government à la Department of Homeland Security secretary-turned-special envoy for the Shield of the Americas Kristi Noem, the president wrote that she will be “transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future.”
The Times had reported that Trump was considering replacing Bondi with current EPA administrator Lee Zeldin. At least for now, the president chose to tap someone already at the Department of Justice. “Our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General,” Trump announced on Truth Social.
What Went Wrong
Prior to Trump formally announcing Bondi was out, Davis speculated that the president’s purported issues with the now-former AG likely stem from what happened during his first term in office.
“I think to understand the whole Bondi thing, you have to go back to the first Trump administration. His initial AG was Jeff Sessions, one of the first people in Congress who ever got on his side back in 2015… and he ended up being a disaster,” he explained. “He turned over the department to the Deep State. He recused himself during the Russia hoax. And then we had Rod Rosenstein for several years, and in comes Bill Barr.”
As Davis explained it, Barr was “maybe not the most loyal guy,” but he was seen as “very, very competent.” Even so, that didn’t end particularly well either. “He dispatched the Mueller probe and his special counsel, but then kind of fell apart,” he said. “He didn’t really follow through with what he needed to do on Russiagate accountability, and then ended up kind of going crazy towards the end. He and Trump [had] a breakup.”
Enter Pam Bondi. “I think Trump, with Bondi, decided… he wanted someone who was loyal above all else. He tried the competent but not loyal thing with Barr, and, this time, he wanted someone who was loyal,” Davis noted. “I think, unfortunately, she was very loyal. Absolutely. She wasn’t particularly competent.”
He pointed to the very issues The New York Times reported were to blame for her downfall as examples. “I think she dropped the ball on a ton of things. The Epstein handling was a farce – the way she handled that initial White House meeting, the handout of the binders – and I think it did extreme damage to Trump the way she handled it,” Davis explained. “And I don’t find it particularly surprising that he has probably had enough, especially when you look at what happened with Tish James, with James Comey, with so many things falling apart. I think he understands now, yeah, loyalty is important, but you need to have somebody who can actually do the job competently every day.”
Is Gabbard Next?
With Bondi out, the focus now turns to DNI Gabbard after The Guardian reported Thursday morning that President Trump is privately polling his top advisers about whether he should replace her. He is apparently upset that she did not condemn Joe Kent, the former director of National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) who resigned over his opposition to the Iran war. Kent reported to Gabbard in his role at NCTC and was previously her chief of staff.
According to The Guardian, Trump is also not happy that Gabbard, a long-time opponent of foreign interventions, has appeared reluctant to defend the administration’s actions in Iran as part of Operation Epic Fury.
When Trump was asked by a reporter on Air Force One Sunday if he had “confidence” in Gabbard, he offered what Megyn called a “pretty tepid” response. “She’s a little bit different in her thought process than me, but that doesn’t make somebody not available to serve,” he said.
Ahmari said he is not surprised by the report given what he has heard from sources in the administration, including “lot of people in the security apparatus or the Pentagon.”
“What they tell me is that the so-called ‘restraint camp,’ people who are conservative but believe in the U.S. should leave forever wars – especially wars of regime change and especially in the Middle East – behind, the people who want to pivot away from that and focus either on domestic development or because they see China as the greater threat, those people of whom Tulsi was very much one… won many of the staffing battles inside the administration, meaning they got these jobs up and down the Pentagon, the intelligence community, and so on,” he explained. “But what’s happened is that that’s not who the people who ultimately made the really, really big policy call, which is to invade Iran.”
Instead, Ahmari said so-called “outside voices” like “uber hawks” Mark Levin, Miriam Adelson, and Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton have the president’s ear. That dynamic will, at some point, come to a head. “There are these people in the administration who were brought on the premise that this was going to be the administration that was not going to do this one thing, which is launch a war against Iran – a big war, especially, rather than like a quick intervention,” Ahmari noted. “So, what do they do? And all of them are facing this pressure. Do they just grind it out and grit their teeth… Or do they resign? Or even if they don’t want to resign, do they get, you know, thrown out for lack of sufficient enthusiasm? And I think maybe she is in that circle.”
Megyn said she believes Gabbard is someone who would grind it out, but that is not to say she could not be relieved of her duties anyway. That, in Megyn’s view, would be an unfortunate loss.
“To lose Joe Kent and then to lose Tulsi Gabbard too? It’s like the restrainer wing of the Republican Party – which is already unhappy with Trump – if he fires Tulsi, that’s not going to help the poll numbers,” she said. “He doesn’t need to give the neocons another gift. He needs to worry about the other part of the Republican Party that feels as Tulsi does, or at least as she did prior to joining the administration. I’m assuming she secretly feels the same way and is just keeping quiet out of loyalty to him.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Davis and Ahamri by tuning in to episode 1,287 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.