MAGA’s rank-and-file were demanding Attorney General Pam Bondi’s head for months before Donald Trump fired her on Thursday over her performance as the nation’s top law enforcer.
The embattled Trump loyalist has been under fire over everything from her lack of “deep state” prosecutions to her epic meltdown in front of Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors at a Congressional hearing last month.
While Trump’s former personal attorney, Todd Blanche, Bondi’s number two, has been drafted in as interim AG, Lee Zeldin, the former New York congressman handpicked to overhaul the Environmental Protection Agency, has been tipped as a full-time successor.
According to reports, the president has also privately polled cabinet officials about whether to keep his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat whose anti-interventionist views on Iran have long been at odds with Trump’s.
Bondi’s firing was first reported by Fox News after the New York Times suggested she was on the outs, based on four people with knowledge of the conversation.
The MAGA world was buoyed by the news of Bondi’s possible departure, taking to social media to declare “it’s about time.”
“Bondi should have been fired after her first 3 months,” said one MAGA acolyte.
“Bondi isn’t able to get the job done,” added another. “I didn’t trust her and then Trump let her into his inner circle and gave her the AG job.”
“We need an attorney general who is more proactive and spends less time on Fox News,” declared another Trump supporter.
The comments are a sample of the wider views MAGA’s rank-and-file have been pushing for months—ever since she falsely claimed last February that the Epstein files were “sitting on my desk,” only to then thwart their release at every turn.
But high-profile Trump supporters and MAGA-adjacent identities such as radio host Erik Erickson, podcaster Tim Pool and gun rights activist Kyle Rittenhouse also joined the chorus for her sacking after her astonishing appearance at the Capitol Hill Hearing last month.
In extraordinary scenes, the attorney general spent most of her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee yelling at members of Congress, accusing them of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and refusing to answer questions as Epstein’s stunned victims watched in the public gallery.
“The Dow is over 50,000 right now. The S&P at almost 7,000, and the Nasdaq smashing records. That’s what we should be talking about!” she yelled at one point.
In response, Erikson wrote: “When the Attorney General of the United States is asked why she has prosecuted no one related to Jeffrey Epstein and this is her answer, she should be fired or resign.”
Bondi’s public appearances have also become less frequent, with her deputy, Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s former defense lawyers, used instead to sell the administration’s message.
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, Blanche said he was aware of some of the concerns MAGA’s rank-and-file had expressed about the Justice Department under the current leadership.
“The attorney general Pam Bondi, the president and myself—we are changing things,” he sought to assure the unconvinced crowd.
“There is not a single man or woman at the Department of Justice who had anything to do with those prosecutions (of Trump),” adding that FBI director Kash Patel had also “cleaned house” by removing agents who also worked on indicting the president.
But Trump himself has been frustrated that the department under Bondi had not moved aggressively enough to prosecute his political enemies.
In September, he even wrote a social media post directed at “Pam” in which he grumbled about the lack of indictments. Soon after, the Department charged FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Both are now challenging their indictments on the grounds of malicious prosecution.
