When I was growing up, there was a baseball team in Washington. D.C.. that ended up moving to Minnesota. I kept thinking about them these past two weeks
Long story short: It seemed to me that I was witnessing Donald Trump v. the Washington Senators. The Trumpsters had gotten Matt Gaetz to first base, and he was on his way to the prized Office of the Attorney General of the United States. MAGA was close to celebrating a victory: Trump 1, the Senators 0. But, but, but… first base isn’t second base or third base, and definitely not home. After much dithering and confusion on the field, the Senators threw Gaetz out as he attempted to steal second. Yes, there was momentary melancholy in the Trumpster dugout, but, as Donald’s team reminded him, at least they could start again with Pam Bondi at the plate.
Sadly, Stephen Sondheim is nowhere to be found these days and so very hard to blame. Giving him the well-earned benefit of the doubt, I am sure reasonable observers—and even Sondheim himself—couldn’t have predicted how literally Donald John Trump would follow his “A Little Night Music.” Trump has sent in far more clowns than anyone could have reasonably expected.
And so, I must report, there is still more farce to contend with. Now, a lot of commentators regarded throwing Gaetz out at second as an embarrassing defeat for Donald Trump, but I think they are missing the point. In a world where Republican politicians take credit for absolutely everything, including the clean-energy jobs created by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and the manufacturing jobs created by his CHIPS Act (legislation Republicans vigorously opposed), somehow no one has stepped up to the microphone to take credit for scuttling the nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general. Not a single Republican congressperson or senator wants to be known as the man/woman who thwarted Donald. They are, of course, the same folks who were pretty much willing to publicly support the nomination until the winds shifted. And what strong winds they turned out to be: drug use, sex with underage women, and payments from Gaetz easily traced to them.
Remember, the House Republicans were willing to keep secret the damaging report of their own bipartisan Ethics Committee, and Senate Republicans kept mum until the prospect of having to watch these underage women appear before a Senate committee to tell their story. Trump has lost no sleep putting Bondi.
But, I am not willing to say goodbye to the Gaetz nomination story just yet. Because there is a major lesson to be learned. Having known all this dirt, this is the man Donald Trump wanted to serve as the chief law enforcement officer in the land. And we should never forget that, up until the last moment, Republicans were prepared to make that happen. Just before he withdrew his nomination, as The New York Times reports, “Mr. Gaetz, who visited with Republican senators on Wednesday to help make a case for his selection, said in the post that the meetings were ‘excellent,’ and that ‘momentum was strong.’”
How about we take a look back at what the soon-to-be president of the United States said about his nominee:

For those of you who imagine my use of clowns or the implication that we are witnessing a MAGA clown show an unfair characterization, I invite to check out Wikipedia’s description of “the Pueblo clown of the Kachina culture. A Heyoka is an individual in Lakota and Dakota cultures who lives outside the constraints of normal cultural roles, playing the role of a backwards clown by doing everything in reverse.”
As for “reverse,” compare Donald Trump’s clarion claim that Gaetz will “end weaponized government” with his constant declarations during the campaign that he will deliver vengeance, revenge, and retribution:

And it didn’t take long for Elon Musk, Trump’s new best friend and the man supposed to make our government more efficient, to double-down and amplify what Gaetz was meant to do:
Matt Gaetz has 3 critical assets that are needed for the AG role: a big brain, a spine of steel and an axe to grind.
He is the Judge Dredd America needs to clean up a corrupt system and put powerful bad actors in prison.
Gaetz will be our Hammer of Justice.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2024
Do you think many Republican senators remember the time when wielding your axe to grind and wanting to bring your hammer to work would automatically disqualify a candidate to head the Department of Justice? Especially one about to take an oath to dispense justice impartially and without favor inside the building which flies the flag of the American eagle?

In some ways, the appointment was hilariously inappropriate; in other ways it was so very dark and disturbing. Gaetz combined incompetence with malice and, like some of Trump’s other picks, an almost utter lack of experience. Maybe it was the odd pun, but I thought of Dante’s “Inferno” and Longfellow’s translation of excerpts from Canto III, “The Gate of Hell”:
Through me the way is to the city dolent;
Through me the way is to eternal dole;
Through me the way among the people lost.
Justice incited my sublime Creator;
Created me divine Omnipotence,
The highest Wisdom and the primal Love.
Before me there were no created things,
Only eterne, and I eternal last.
All hope abandon, ye who enter in! …
We to the place have come, where I have told thee
Thou shalt behold the people dolorous
Who have foregone the good of intellect.
Languages diverse, horrible dialects,
Accents of anger, words of agony,
And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands,
Made up a tumult that goes whirling on
For ever in that air for ever black,
Even as the sand doth, when the whirlwind breathes.
In the end, enough members of Congress found the specter of Matt Gaetz as the dispenser of justice in America so egregious that they located just a tiny bit of the courage they had left behind ever since the January 6 insurrection. Perhaps they couldn’t dispense with the image of their daughters, their nieces as Matt Gaetz’s next victims. Almost as quickly as he appeared on first base determined to make it home as Donald Trump’s attorney general, he exited the field to the dugout and on to the clubhouse.

And it is now Pam Bondi’s responsibility to convince the Senate to allow her to exact vengeance. As Mark Berman and David Nakamura of The Washington Post reveal, this is a job she has been auditioning for for the several years:
Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney general has served as a reliable ally and a fierce critic of attempts to investigate or prosecute him. Again and again, when Donald Trump has faced scandal and scrutiny, Pam Bondi was there to defend him.

ABC News added these details:
In August 2023, during an appearance on Fox News, Bondi railed against the criminal indictments against Trump and what Fox host Sean Hannity described as a ‘two-tiered system of justice.’ ‘When Republicans take back the White House, and we will be back in there in 18 months or less, you know what’s going to happen? The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones — the investigators will be investigated,’ she said. ‘Because the deep state last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows,’ Bondi continued. ‘But now, they have a spotlight on them and they can all be investigated … We can clean house next term and that’s what has to happen.’
She also implied action could be taken against President Joe Biden amid Republican allegations that Biden was personally involved in and benefited from his family’s overseas business dealings, which have yet to be supported by direct evidence. ‘When we have a new administration, absolutely, Sean. It has to,’ Bondi said at the time.
Glenn Thrush of The New York Times offered this analysis of her career:
Pam Bondi Is Trump’s New Choice for Attorney General. Here’s What to Know About Her. Florida’s first female state attorney general, she became a member of Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team and backed his false claims of election fraud in 2020. President-elect Donald J. Trump quickly swept aside Thursday’s bad headlines about Matt Gaetz by speedily substituting Pam Bondi, a fellow Florida Republican with a starkly different profile — but a similar reputation for fealty — to be his attorney general. Ms. Bondi, 59, is a lobbyist and Trump loyalist who served as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019. She has charted a more conventional and less clamorous course than Mr. Gaetz, with little of the ugly personal or political baggage that led some Republicans to oppose Mr. Gaetz’s nomination.
Thrush continues:
Ms. Bondi — a Democrat until 2000 — emerged from a crowded Republican primary to win the attorney general’s race after garnering the support of Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and failed 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, and by touting her tough stance on crime during appearances on Fox News. During her eight-year tenure, she tried unsuccessfully to overturn and weaken the Affordable Care Act, opposed expanding legal protections for the L.G.B.T.Q. community and cultivated a national reputation by supporting anti-human-trafficking efforts.
According to Advocate, which covers LGBTQ+ news and politics:
Trump’s new attorney general pick has a mixed history on LGBTQ+ issues. The first disappointment from Bondi for many LGBTQ+ Floridians came when she first ran in a Republican Primary for the statewide office. She had initially refused to take a stance on whether she would defend Florida’s decades-old ban on adoption by gays and lesbians, drawing fire from groups like the anti-LGBTQ+ Florida Family Policy Council. But after the group endorsed one of her opponents, Bondi later told Politifact she would ‘vigorously defend Florida’s law banning gay adoption in our state.’
Here is the language of Florida’s unique ban on adoption by gay parents, under section 63.042(3) of the Florida code:

This is the law Pam Bondi vociferously defended. Advocate continues:
Her stance would never be tested. A state appellate court struck down Florida’s law months before her 2010 election. She played no role when the Florida Legislature formally repealed the 1977 ban. But Bondi did defend a Florida constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2008, two years before her election as Florida Attorney General. She even campaigned on that issue.
In a follow-up, Advocate wrote:
In the wake of Thursday’s ruling from U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, which found that Florida’s voter-approved state constitutional amendment barring marriage equality violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the U.S. Constitution, Bondi said her defense of marriage discrimination is ‘just getting started’ … Bondi has already filed appeals in three state court cases, in which three judges each ruled against the state’s antigay law, approved by 62 percent of voters in 2008. Now she’s pledging to do the same with the first federal ruling to strike down Florida’s ban on marriage equality.
Her office appealed court rulings for years after judges said the state language violated LGBTQ citizens’ civil rights, going as far as petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upholding lower court decisions. While Bondi maintained she had an obligation to defend Florida’s constitution, attorneys general in other states including California, Virginia, and Nevada all abandoned the fight well before her office. Bondi only abandoned the legal effort following the 2015 landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that made marriage equality the law of the land.
As for immigration, in 2012, as Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi decided to join a suit by the State of Arizona defending its highly controversial immigration enforcement bill, SB 1070.

The Florida branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued the following statement criticizing Bondi’s decision:
Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 25, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Arizona’s SB 1070, the controversial anti-immigrant bill which legalizes racial profiling by local law enforcement.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has joined 15 other state Attorneys General in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of Arizona’s law.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed SB1070 in April, 2010. Two lawsuits were filed challenging the law. The ACLU, MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund), the National Immigration Law Center and other civil rights groups filed the first suit on May 17, 2010. The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit on July 6, 2010. Both suits sought to stop the law from being implemented. After hearing both cases, a federal district court in Arizona issued a ruling only in the federal government’s case. That challenge – the federal case – is now before the Supreme Court.
The following statement is from Howard Simon, Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida, on Attorney General Bondi’s participation in the amicus brief to the Supreme Court.
‘Many Floridians are unaware that their Attorney General, Pam Bondi, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow states to make racial profiling a legally-acceptable police practice. She has done so by joining 15 other attorneys general in support of Arizona’s deeply-flawed “show me your papers” law.
‘If Attorney General Bondi’s argument prevails and the Supreme Court upholds Arizona’s law, all states — including Florida — will be given the authority to pass similar laws by which local law enforcement officials would be empowered to stop and demand the papers of anyone, based on nothing more than how they look or speak. These law enforcement practices open the door for wrongful arrests, harassment and other abuses.
‘As Florida’s principal legal officer, the Attorney General should know that racial profiling is bad policing, and that it drives an unnecessary wedge between law enforcement and the communities it protects …’
One of Bondi’s most memorable decisions may explain why she was next in line after Matt Gaetz. Back to Glenn Thrush of the Times:
She declined to take legal action against Trump University. In 2013, Ms. Bondi’s office received nearly two dozen complaints about Mr. Trump’s short-lived for-profit university, and her aides said she was considering joining a multistate lawsuit brought on behalf of students who claimed they had been cheated. Four days later, Ms. Bondi’s political action committee received a $25,000 contribution from a nonprofit funded by Mr. Trump. She never joined the lawsuit. Both Mr. Trump and Ms. Bondi have denied a quid pro quo. But Mr. Trump had to pay a $2,500 fine in 2016 for violating federal tax laws in making the contribution.
Pam Bondi is on the verge of becoming the attorney general of the United States. Yet she declined to prosecute Donald Trump for defrauding more than 5,000 Americans who attended his scam university, a school that falsely promised to help them become successful at selling real estate. Then she accepted a $25,000 donation to her election campaign from a Trump charitable foundation.
Just in case we have all forgotten what the attorney general does:

I can only imagine the quality of legal advice that an already compromised Attorney General Bondi might give to felonious President Trump.
Here is what New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said about what Donald Trump and Trump University did:
Between 2005 through 2011, Trump University operated as an unlicensed educational institute that promised to teach Donald Trump’s real estate investing techniques to consumers nationwide but instead misled consumers into paying for a series of expensive courses that did not deliver on their promises.
More than 5,000 people across the country who paid Donald Trump $40 million to teach them his hard sell tactics got a hard lesson in bait-and-switch … Mr. Trump used his celebrity status and personally appeared in commercials making false promises to convince people to spend tens of thousands of dollars they couldn’t afford for lessons they never got. No one, no matter how rich or popular they are, has a right to scam hard working New Yorkers. Anyone who does should expect to be held accountable.

On April 9, 2018, Schneiderman released the following statement announcing a $25 million settlement of claims against Trump University:
Judge Curiel’s order finalizing the $25 million Trump University settlement means that victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve. We are particularly pleased that the final settlement we negotiated with class counsel ensures that members of the class will receive an even higher settlement than anyone originally anticipated.
This settlement marked a stunning reversal by President Trump, who for years refused to compensate the victims of his sham university.
While Bondi might make the argument that she did not think she could win the Trump University case, Washington Monthly reports:
In June 2018, following a two-year investigation, New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood filed a 40-page verified petition in New York State Supreme Court against Trump, his three oldest children, and the Donald J. Trump Foundation, alleging persistent violations of state and federal law governing charitable foundations. Lawyers call this ‘charity fraud.’ …
The Trumps settled the case with the foundation, agreeing to dissolve under judicial supervision and pay $2 million to a group of nonprofit organizations. Underwood said that Trump used the charitable foundation as a piggy bank to fund his personal and business expenses and finance his presidential campaign. Trump, the sole signatory of its bank accounts, approved all grants and disbursements …
Also alleged in the complaint was an unlawful $25,000 contribution from the Trump Foundation to Bondi’s reelection campaign. She had been pondering a complaint against Trump for defrauding Sunshine State enrollees at Trump University. Trump initially attempted to conceal the illegal payment to Bondi’s campaign. Only when a watchdog organization uncovered the contribution did Trump refund the foundation and pay a federal excise tax as a penalty. The complaint also alluded to a series of false IRS filings on its Form 990, routinely signed by Trump under penalty of perjury, in which he represented that the foundation had not engaged in political activity.
Washington Monthly continues:

Back to Glenn Thrush’s Bondi list:
She was a member of Trump’s impeachment defense team. After leaving office in 2019, Ms. Bondi was hired by Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with close ties to Mr. Trump, and registered as a lobbyist for Qatar. She has also represented Amazon, Uber and General Motors, according to records. A year later, she joined the team defending Mr. Trump during his first impeachment, where she accused former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a private citizen, of engaging in corrupt business practices with his son Hunter. Those charges have never been substantiated, but her willingness to promote them cemented her bond with Mr. Trump and earned her a prime speaking slot at the Republican National Convention later that year …
After Mr. Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Ms. Bondi supported Mr. Trump’s fabricated claims of election fraud. In November 2020, Ms. Bondi deflected when a Fox News host asked her to back up her assertion that ‘fake ballots’ for Mr. Biden were pouring into tabulation centers. ‘Pam, did you just say fake ballots?’ the host asked. ‘There could be. That’s the problem,’ replied Ms. Bondi, who later accepted a post with America First Policy, a Trump-aligned group. ‘Just tell us what you know,’ he added. Ms. Bondi, who would be responsible for investigating allegations of irregularities in federal elections as attorney general, did not provide any evidence.
Perhaps you remember the infamous news conference held by Rudy Guiliani with Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Pam Bondi, and Corey Lewandoski in Philadelphia, Penn., on November 4, 2020, the day after the election. Here is coverage by C-SPAN. Rudi Guiliani stated: “I would like to ask Pam Bondi to explain what’s going on at the polling place which is just dastardly and criminal.”

Pam Bondi responded:
Good evening. We are thrilled to have won Pennsylvania with 87 percent of the vote and we are up almost 400,000 votes. Why do we care about the rest of the votes? It is about the integrity of the election. Every vote in every state must be counted fairly. What we’ve seen – we have a video of it that we will release to you. They put up a police barricade all the way around the perimeter. They are keeping our watchers back approximately 30 feet, at least 30 feet. You can judge for yourselves. They would not … let them look any further. There’s a gentlemen there who is an assistant to a City Commissioner and he’s wearing a huge badge around his neck. He told them they can’t come any closer. The reason was because of – they can’t interfere with the process. Something about COVID. At the polls. You have to stay … stay six feet apart. They weren’t allowed to be there. We will release that video to you. They also had binoculars. Our poll watchers brought out binoculars. They were shut down on the binoculars. That’s a concession that we are … allowed to observe the ballots. When you see how big the room is, you cannot see every ballot. You can only see with binoculars. The ones that are closest to you. That a concession by them and they are still not letting us see them. We need to remedy this now. We won Pennsylvania. We want every vote to be counted in a fair way …
Just for the record, according to CNN, and contrary to Rudi Guiliana and Pam Bondi, Donald Trump never won Pennsylvania in 2020. Biden won by 80,000 votes:

For those of you believe in the first amendment and the right of the people to peacefully protest, you might be concerned about the prospect of Pam Bondi running the Department of Justice. As The Telegraph reported in “Pam Bondi: Pick to replace Matt Gaetz wants to deport pro-Palestine protestors“:
The former prosecutor is a firm supporter of Israel and called for a crackdown on pro-Hamas demonstrations that erupted at college campuses last year.
‘The thing that’s really the most troubling to me [are] these students in universities in our country, whether they’re here as Americans or if they’re here on student visas, and they’re out there saying “I support Hamas.” she told Newsmax.
‘Frankly they need to be taken out of our country or the FBI needs to be interviewing them right away.’
Ms Bondi previously called Israel ‘our greatest ally in the world’ in an interview with Fox News, and her support has been welcomed by Jewish lawmakers.
Robert Wexler, the former Democratic representative of Florida, told Jewish Insider: ‘When it comes to the interests of the Jewish community and having an attorney general that will fight for the protection of the Jewish community, we could not do better than Pam Bondi.’
There are several other areas of concern. As Florida attorney general, she was committed to ending Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. As the Latin Times put it:
Bondi’s political career has also been defined by her efforts to challenge the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as Obamacare. In 2012, she played a leading role in a multistate lawsuit that sought to overturn the ACA. Bondi argued that the individual mandate, which required Americans to obtain health insurance or face a penalty, was unconstitutional. Although the Supreme Court ultimately upheld the mandate as a tax, Bondi’s involvement in the case solidified her reputation as a staunch opponent of federal overreach.
Bondi continued her opposition to Obamacare throughout her time in office, aligning with conservative efforts to dismantle the legislation, including efforts to repeal the part that forbids insurance companies to deny coverage based on preexisting conditions. Her vocal stance on the issue made her a favorite among Florida Republicans and helped cement her national profile as a champion of conservative values.
[Emphasis added.]
This same Latin Times article also provided a most provocative paragraph:
Pam Bondi, Trump’s New Pick for Attorney General Pushed to Delay Florida Execution to Save Fundraising Event. The former Florida AG also defended the President elect on his first impeachment process and has been accused of having ties with the church of Scientology.
They explained:
In September 2013, Bondi faced public backlash after her office requested a delay of the execution of Marshall Lee Gore, a convicted murderer. Gore, who had been sentenced to death for the brutal killings of two women in the 1980s, was initially scheduled to be executed on September 10, 2013. However, Bondi’s office asked then-Governor Rick Scott to delay the execution by three weeks, citing a scheduling conflict — a political fundraising event.
The fundraiser, hosted at the home of a prominent Republican donor, prompted widespread criticism, with many accusing Bondi of placing political ambition over her responsibilities as Attorney General. Bondi later apologized for the request, calling it a mistake and stating that it was ‘not the right thing to do.’ Despite her apology, the incident has remained a controversial footnote in her political career.
With some additional research, I found this headline from the July 1, 2014, issue of the Tampa Bay Times:

A friend, Tom, suggested that by emphasizing the clownish nature of Donald Trump’s picks for his forthcoming cabinet and Trumpovia 2.0, I might inadvertently be minimizing the extreme danger he and they pose. I am sorry if I have given the impression that the coming autocracy is a joking matter. Sometimes when staring evil in the eye, I require humor and irony to remain standing. In any event, here is more Bondi evidence that Donald Trump requires fealty more than competence from those he pretends will do the people’s business.
The Tampa Bay Times continues:
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who already has raised millions for her re-election campaign, can expect to pull in more dollars tonight at a Clearwater fundraiser where all six organizers are prominent members of the Church of Scientology. Hosting the event are Liz and Michael Baybak, owners of a 23rd-floor penthouse in the swank Water’s Edge condos downtown. The tower, perched on a 40-foot bluff, affords stunning views of Clearwater Harbor to the west and, in every other direction, Scientology’s many buildings.
Baybak is chief executive of Michael Baybak and Company, a Clearwater-based business services consulting firm. Baybak and his wife have been major donors to Scientology. They also have been occasional contributors to congressional candidates, federal elections records show. They could not be reached for comment …
Bondi is aware Scientologists are staging the event, said campaign spokeswoman Christina Johnson. She said Bondi first connected with Scientologists in 2010 when she and other elected officials toured some of the church’s Clearwater facilities. Bondi spoke then to a group of Scientologists about human trafficking and the evils of pill mills, a topic that resonated because Scientologists sponsor what they tout as the largest antidrug program in the world.
At Tuesday’s fundraiser, she will return to those themes, Johnson said. ‘It’s like-minded folks sharing the same goals: Protecting children against drug overdoses and human trafficking,’ Johnson said.
One of those topics rings with irony. From 2009 to 2011, the FBI investigated church work sites, primarily in California, focusing on physical and mental restrictions and probing whether they constituted human trafficking. The investigation ended with no charges filed.
[Emphasis added.]
So, what can I say. You can pick and choose amongst the very many reasons you might imagine Pam Bondi ought not be our next attorney general. The best case for Bondi is that she is not Matt Gaetz. The several worst cases for her are her rabid commitment to undo all the gains made by LGTBQ+ Americans, her willingness to lie relentlessly about Donald Trump’s election loss in 2020, her use of her position as Florida’s attorney general to pursue MAGA’s election lies, and her willingness to deny Floridians the demonstrable health benefits of the Affordable Care Act. Time and time again, she has chosen her political allegiance to the far-right agenda over the benefit of ordinary Americans. Trump may gain yet another sycophant, but the rest of us will suffer having lost an attorney general committed to providing justice under the law.