Wow. Quite a roller coaster on The BradCast today. Spoiler alert: One of the big unknowns throughout the bulk of the show finally became known in our final few minutes on air. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
Following Donald Trump‘s obnoxiously profane Easter Sunday threat to commit war crimes with the mass bombing of civilian power plants and bridges in Iran at 8pm tonight (Tuesday); his repeat of those promises on Monday; and his fresh Tuesday morning vow that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” if Iran refused to meet his tough-guy demand to re-open the Strait of Hormuz, Trump appears to have re-earned his TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) title just over an hour or so before the latest random deadline he had otherwise pulled out of his ass. (That followed on similar TACOs in weeks prior over the same issue, though later reporting tonight suggests Iran has agreed to allow traffic through the Strait for two weeks in exchange for a U.S. ceasefire during that period. They will charge ships for passage, however.)
As noted at the top of the show — before Trump called off the attack during our final few minutes — it looks like the markets called this one again late today. After taking a dive at open in the morning, they largely recovered by the close — as if someone got word in advance of Trump’s announcement…yet again.
So, was it just another TACO? Or did it matter to Trump that his top MAGA supporters, from Tucker Carlson to Candance Owens to Marjorie Taylor Green to Alex Jones (for chrissakes!), were all turning tail on him over the past two days, describing him as having gone “insane” or worse, and calling for his removal from office under the 25th Amendment?
And where does Trump’s ridiculously ill-considered war go from here? That question remains for another day.
NEXT UP… Last week, while we were on break, Trump fired his wildly corrupt and perfectly sycophantic Attorney General Pam Bondi for reasons that also remain unknown as of today. The firing was arguably meant to distract from his disastrous war which was, itself, meant as a distraction from the news out of the Epstein Files, emerging just before he launched his war, that a woman had credibly alleged he sexually assaulted her when she was 13-years old.
Beyond that, however, what of Bondi’s year-long legacy overseeing the corruption and destruction of the rule of law on Trump’s behalf at the Dept. of Justice?
We’re joined to discuss that today by our friend RANDALL D. ELIASON, the DOJ’s former chief of Fraud and Public Corruption at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. He wrote about this fine mess at his Sidebars blog this week, in a piece titled “Pam Bondi’s Legacy of Destruction”.
Eliason, who now teaches white collar crime at George Washington University Law School, laments the tragic fallout from the past year of Bondi’s tenure by quipping: “I tell everybody, I’ve become a history professor,” telling his students “Back when we used to prosecute white collar crime, these were the offenses…”
Lots to discuss with Eliason today, as usual, including…
- The 23,000(!) “criminal investigations into cases involving terrorism, white collar crime, drugs, and other offenses” that Bondi has shut down since taking office.
- The top two or three most shameful aspects of “Bondi’s tragic track record.”
- How Eliason sees her performance as far worse than Bill Barr‘s during Trump’s first term. (“I wouldn’t have thought that somebody could make Barr look good by comparison.”)
- How describing the Justice Dept. under Bondi as “Trump’s personal law firm” is “too generous”.
- How he now has to tell students that he can’t recommend they go to the DOJ for the previously “highly coveted jobs” that were “really, really hard to get and considered to be a dream job for a lot of people,” even though it is now understaffed “because of all the people who have headed for the exits rather than work for this Administration — and all the ones who have been fired.”
- Whether Bondi should face ethical sanctions under the Florida State Bar or even criminal charges under a future administration.
- What we should expect moving forward under the “acting AG” stewardship of Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer turned Deputy AG Todd Blanche.
- And much more!…
“In one year,” Eliason tells me, “this thing called the ‘presumption of regularity‘, that over decades was built up” by the DOJ for its attorneys in the court system, “has been shredded” by Bondi’s “pattern of lying to and misleading the courts.” He fears “it’s going to take a long, long time” to get that back, “if it can be done at all.”
“She was willing to use the Dept. of Justice to pursue the President’s political enemies. That is just directly contrary to the Department’s mission and everything it has stood for for decades. That’s what authoritarians do.”
FINALLY… Desi Doyen joins us for our first Green News Report following Spring Break and, as you might expect, it’s a doozy!…
