“This is an example of the Deep State we have been up against,” says phony-binder enthusiast Pam Bondi, attorney general of the United States of by-God America.
That got my attention—these chuckleheads are always going on and on about the so-called Deep State, but they rarely are able to point to anything solid. Usually, it’s something vague: Some judge rules that one of Donald Trump’s obviously illegal and unconstitutional actions is obviously illegal and unconstitutional, and that’s the Deep State at work, somehow, even when the judge is a Trump appointee. But the attorney general of these United States, with the vast investigative resources at her disposal (she scrolls a great deal of social media, apparently), is on the case.
And she gets results: The guy who threw a sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent in Washington, D.C., no longer works for the federal government.
Breathe a sigh of relief, America. Boss Pam is on top of it.
The sandwich-throwing guy is a pretty solid D.C. specimen, from the pink polo and shorts to the straight-outta-Swarthmore cries of “fascism!” to the government job and the … demeanor. “Why are you here?” he demanded of a knot of federal employees in … Washington, where they work a short walk away from sandwich guy’s former employer—the Department of Justice. “I don’t want you in my city!” I suppose they could move Customs to Lickskillet, Alabama—which would make sending them mail a lot more fun!—but there would be inconveniences.
Pam Bondi’s “Deep State” horsepucky is a pitch-perfect example of Trumpist rhetoric. She is (for now!) the @$&!ing attorney general of the United States of America and dutifully serving cheek-by-copious jowl alongside the most self-consciously hypermasculine collection of tough guys since Tom of Finland quit working, but she wants you to know that she is a victim, too, a poor, vulnerable, long-suffering victim of the kind of ruthless Deep State malefactors who take their meals at Subway and then sometimes throw six inches—maybe a whole foot!—of “Home Run Ham” at some poor federales with nothing to defend themselves except, one supposes, the standard-issue Glock 47 MOS they hand out like staplers and ballpoint pens over at CBP. Donald Trump has the National Guard rolling into the streets of the nation’s capital city, but—angels and ministers of grace, defend us!—there’s a maniac with cold-cuts on the loose.
(Six Inches of Home Run Ham was not, tragically, the name of one of those softcore porn movies Trump appeared in before the thrice-married game show host became the tribune of American evangelicals.)
Sandwich guy may look like a preposterously preening preppy poltroon, but those who know him know what he is: an Outlaw. “This one’s a wild card and doesn’t follow the rules,” Subway says of the Outlaw sandwich, which can have as many as 1,120 calories, depending on how you spec it. The sandwich (steak, double pepper jack, onions, peppers, and something called “Baja Chipotle”) gets mixed reviews. Nothing quite says “American Outlaw” like a tube of bland carbohydrates served up at some ghastly micturition-yellow storefront by a bored tweaker with a nonstandard number of teeth. Subway isn’t the grossest thing in Washington—I was there earlier this week and walked by a half-naked guy furiously masturbating on the sidewalk right near the Brunello Cucinelli boutique, and that particular scene is pretty much Washington life in a nutshell—but it kind of fits the city socially and aesthetically: empty, bland, overpriced, not especially good for your health, and plagued by child molestation.
There are terrorists and human traffickers and cartels and old-fashioned mobsters and gangsters out there, all across the fruited plain, and, in our nation’s hideous capital, there are little platoons of madness, schizophrenic onanists on the sidewalk manhandling the ham candle, having a hallucinatory ménage à moi right there on all the best commercial real estate in town, and Pam Bondi is pointing to the guy committing flagrant hoagie assault (Flagrant Hoagie Assault also is not the name of one of those softcore porn movies Trump was in) and crying out to the weary republic: “See? See? This—THIS!—is what we are up against!”
When you are facing that kind of nefarious enemy, you really need a champion who is something of a “wild card and doesn’t follow the rules.” Everybody wants to be the outlaw: In the runup to the 2024 election, lifted pickup trucks from sea to shining sea were decorated with bumper stickers reading: “Outlaw-Hillbilly 2024.”
Norms? Those are for suckers. Sometimes, you just have to have a catboy on your side.
The problem with being the guy who is too fierce and too courageous to be constrained by the rules in his pursuit of higher justice is that everybody thinks he is the hero of the story: If Trump violates laws and norms left and right, if J.D. Vance spreads idiotic lies about black immigrants, if Pam Bondi engages in Jeffrey Epstein theater (binders full of pedophiles!), their followers and admirers insist that procedure is for losers: Ask Twitter tough guy Patrick Ruffini. But sandwich guy thinks he is the hero, too. Donald Trump believes in American greatness; Ted Kaczynski loved nature; David Koresh believed in God.
Sandwich guy apparently believes that the bread machine over at Subway has the same slogan on the side as Woody Guthrie’s guitar: “This machine kills fascists.” And poor feckless Pam Bondi, being as clever as a sausage, has to wait around for someone to tell her what to think about that.
