It’s always satisfying when unfit Trumpist toadies who abase themselves for public influence are stripped of it unceremoniously and exiled to disgraced obscurity. (You’re next, Kash.) But my schadenfreude at the Bondi news left me wondering why she got the axe while Pete Hegseth, who was also in the news yesterday, hasn’t.
Reverse DEI.
On Thursday, the secretary of defense told Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, that it’s time to retire despite the fact that George had more than a year left to serve in his position. Two other Army generals were also sent packing.
That’s a curious thing to do in the middle of a war with Iran, particularly at a moment when the president is threatening to target infrastructure like the power plants on which Iranian civilians rely. My first thought was a dark one: What if Hegseth ordered the Army to commit one of those war crimes he likes so much and was refused, prompting him to dismiss George and the others and to start searching for his own Roy Cohn inside the Pentagon?
But in a way, that scenario gives him too much credit. Hegseth has been purging high-ranking officers since practically his first day on the job; it wouldn’t take a momentous act of defiance for him to find grounds to dismiss someone as esteemed as George is. The true reason for George’s dismissal must be much stupider, I surmised.
And it is. It’s extremely stupid.
According to the New York Times, George and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll have recommended 29 officers for promotion to the rank of one-star general. Hegseth objected to four—two of them black, two of them women. He pressed George and Driscoll to remove them from the list, but they refused, believing all four merited the distinction due to their exemplary service. Two weeks ago, George requested a meeting with Hegseth to discuss that matter “as well as the general’s view that Mr. Hegseth was interfering unnecessarily in Army personnel decisions overall.” The secretary refused. Now George is out.
Is it believable that Pete Hegseth would upend the Army’s chain of command during wartime because he cares that much about blocking worthy nonwhite and female officers from promotion? Uh, yes. Entirely believable.
Half the reason he got this job was because of his Trump-pleasing culture-war tirades about “DEI” on cable news. Ridding the Pentagon of all vestiges of diversity programs was a top priority for him after being confirmed, and not just because it was one of the few initiatives a former junior officer who’s grossly out of his depth might logically feel comfortable undertaking. It’s an artifact of Hegseth’s broader postliberal delusion that all American failures are due to being too “soft”: If the military isn’t winning every war, it can only be because the rules of engagement are too restrictive or because the “woke” establishment keeps elevating supposedly undeserving blacks and women to positions of authority.
“Reverse DEI,” in which well-qualified officers of the wrong race or sex have their careers ruined by a grossly unqualified Fox News blowhard, was another foreseeable symptom of America’s Stage IV Trumpist cancer.
This morning, citing nine separate U.S officials, NBC News reported that Hegseth has blocked or delayed the promotions of more than a dozen black and/or female senior officers, “some of whom are seen as having been targeted because of their race, gender or perceived affiliation with Biden administration policies or officials.” Last month, sources told the Times that his chief of staff went as far as to inform Driscoll that the secretary opposed one officer’s promotion because “President Trump would not want to stand next to a black female officer at military events,” in the paper’s words.
Not a great look for a president who wouldn’t be in the White House right now if not for surprisingly strong support among nonwhite voters in 2024. Yet it’s Pam Bondi, not Pete Hegseth, who’s at home today wondering if there’s room for one more newly unemployed Trump apparatchik on the right-wing vaudeville circuit. Why is that?
Is Pete next?
There may be some truth to the idea that the president finds scapegoating women more appealing than scapegoating men. It would be characteristic of Trump to conclude that his support is plummeting because he’s perceived as too “weak” when the obvious truth, per his polling on the Iran war, is the opposite.
If so, no one in the Cabinet is at greater risk right now than Tulsi Gabbard, and no one is safer than the preposterous he-man tryhard Hegseth.
The problem with the sexism theory is that the president is reportedly thinking of dropping the axe on some of his male deputies as well. FBI Director Kash Patel could be on the chopping block after embarrassing the White House repeatedly, as might Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. If you believe journalist Michael Wolff (always a risky proposition), Trump has also been asking confidants whether they think Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “crazy.” (Spoiler: yes.)
Even Hegseth himself might not be safe for much longer, as juicy leaks about him having supposedly underestimated Iran’s capabilities are dribbling into the press. Unless the war ends much more favorably for the United States than seems likely, the president will need someone afterward to blame—Israel perhaps, Europe certainly, and Pete Hegseth possibly. The sooner the better, too, as Trump’s dwindling political capital will make Senate confirmation more difficult the longer he waits.
There’s circumstantial evidence that the defense secretary is worried about it.
One administration official told the Washington Post that Randy George wasn’t the real target of Thursday’s purge. “Hegseth can’t fire [Army Secretary Dan] Driscoll,” the source alleged, “so he’s going to make his life hell” by removing his allies, of which George was one. Driscoll is an old friend of Vice President J.D. Vance, was tapped in lieu of Hegseth as a liaison to Ukraine in peace negotiations last fall, and has been touted as a potential replacement as defense secretary previously. Perhaps fearing that his job security has grown precarious, Hegseth might be moving to marginalize his likeliest successor.
So maybe that’s the answer to why Bondi got the boot while Hegseth continues to lick boots at Cabinet meetings. He’s on his way out the door, too, but Trump doesn’t want to fire him while combat is ongoing lest it be taken as an admission that the war is a mistake. As soon as things wind down, the secretary will be back on Fox hawking ED pills or whatever.
I don’t think that explains everything, though. There are meaningful differences between the two, attitudinal and structural.
Ruthless people.
Pam Bondi always seemed to speak MAGA as a second language. There’s an unmistakable sadistic relish to the rhetoric used by true-blue Trump disciples that the mere opportunists among them lack, and which usually can’t be faked. It’s the difference between Stephen Miller and Marco Rubio: Rubio dutifully mouths the words expected of him, but his eyes never shine at the promise of cruelty like Miller’s do.
Bondi’s eyes never seemed to do so either. She was a more or less respectable person 10 years ago and was willing to forfeit that respectability for the sake of power, but she never evinced the telltale joie de vivre about persecuting the president’s adversaries. The awkward spectacle of her testimony before the House in February is the supreme proof. Try as she might to impress her boss with sick burns of the Democrats questioning her, she seemed pained on some level by how undignified her behavior was. Trump supporters sensed her discomfort, too, I suspect, as her forced attempt at crowd-pleasing didn’t seem to please them overly much.
Hegseth, the war-crimes enthusiast, speaks MAGA fluently. The delight he seems to take in ruthlessness and brutality toward enemies feels authentic, as does his obsequiousness toward Trump. Bondi’s toadying to the president always came off like calculated brown-nosing aimed at protecting her job, whereas Hegseth’s has the appearance of earnest power-worship. And while there’s no reason to think the DOJ’s institutional culture will improve with Bondi gone, there is reason to think the Pentagon’s might once Hegseth departs. His malign anti-DEI jihad against black and women officers may not be as high of a priority for his successor, particularly if it’s Driscoll.
Trump sensed all of that, perhaps, and reasoned that replacing Bondi would be easy enough, as there’s no shortage of soulless, legally trained careerists on the right. But finding a heartfelt fascist to lead the military who’s (very questionably) qualified to do the job and confirmable by the Senate? Much harder.
Bondi also had a structural disadvantage. The department she led was doomed to face more problems carrying out Trump’s commands than the one led by Hegseth.
The Pentagon answers to the judiciary in matters of law, of course, but most of its business is conducted under the auspices of discretionary executive military authority with which judges are reluctant to meddle. Not so for the DOJ. If they want to inflict pain on you, they need evidence, the cooperation of grand juries and trial juries, and sufficient diligence about proper procedure to satisfy the skeptical eyes of trial and appellate courts.
If Pete Hegseth wants to inflict pain on you, he orders a missile strike on your fishing boat in the Caribbean.
Go figure that a gorilla-channel-watching authoritarian like Trump would be pleased with the performance of the Defense Department as it mercilessly imposes his will on enemies and disappointed at the Justice Department’s failure to do the same. That’s the essence of postliberalism, really, wanting the law to carry out the leader’s wishes as ruthlessly and efficiently as the military does. The Bill of Rights set up Bondi for failure with the president in a way it didn’t for Hegseth.
And there’s surely some import in the fact that, to Trump, the Pentagon is a sword whereas the DOJ is supposed to be both sword and shield. It’s supposed to target his enemies and protect him ruthlessly from any legal or political trouble gathering on the horizon. Sessions’ great failure in the president’s eyes was letting the Russiagate probe persist instead of using his authority as AG to shut it down. Bondi’s great failure was neglecting to somehow suppress the Epstein files, something the president has complained about repeatedly in private.
Pete Hegseth’s duties don’t require him to be a “fixer” for his boss. Bondi’s did: Trump obviously views the Justice Department as his personal law firm, right down to having his picture on the building. She did her best to protect him from the consequences of his actions, up to and including asserting his right to simply stop enforcing laws he disagrees with, but in the end she couldn’t fix his Epstein problem.
Roy Cohn would have, you know. She wasn’t ruthless enough.
The replacements.
Whoever replaces her will need to be.
Lee Zeldin, Trump’s EPA administrator, is being talked up for the job, but Deputy AG Todd Blanche plainly wants it. He sure seems to be auditioning for it, at least. Yesterday he went on Fox News to declare that no more Epstein documents will be released, and last week at CPAC he rejoiced in the fact that every person at the DOJ who worked on a criminal case against Donald Trump has now been purged.
That’s just the sort of sleazy nihilist “fixer” the president is looking for to lead federal law enforcement. “No one dedicated to the rule of law should have any interest in serving as attorney general in this administration,” National Review’s Ed Whelan warned yesterday. No wonder Blanche is interested.
There’s also been idle chitchat about mega-corrupt Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton being plucked from his Senate primary race and offered the job (although he’s almost certainly unconfirmable). Or Sen. Mike Lee, a formerly respected constitutional stickler turned postliberal social media troll. Or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s nearing the end of his term and of his political relevance if he doesn’t score another splashy position soon.
They’re all qualified under the Whelan standard, I think, as all three would understand Trump’s post-Bondi expectation that the law is no excuse for failing to carry out the president’s wishes. DeSantis in particular desperately needs a way to worm himself back into the MAGA right’s good graces before 2028, especially with Vance accumulating political baggage from the Iran war by the hour. He’d be eager to parade his ruthlessness in the job, as enthusiastic as Bondi was ambivalent.
But if he runs up against some ethical red line he can’t stomach crossing, fear not: He’ll be canned too.
“They can never fire the guy they need to fire,” The Bulwark’s Will Saletan said yesterday of Bondi’s departure, accurately enough. But that’s the way Americans wanted it. Our four-pack-a-day country knew Trump couldn’t be held criminally accountable for what he might do in a second term and wouldn’t be held politically accountable by cowardly Senate Republicans via impeachment—and decided to put him in charge of enforcing America’s laws anyway, in a job from which he can’t be dismissed. Now our lungs are full of tumors. There will be more.
