Pam Bondi is likely to sail to confirmation—even if she's an election denier and pretends she was born yesterday—because she meets the simple qualifications of being a lawyer and former prosecutor, and because she's not a frat paddle come to life i.e. Matt Gaetz. But the fact that she wasn't able to clearly state that the U.S. is her client, not Donald Trump, is a giant red flag. Ditto for his personal lawyers also coming on board. Plus, the ominous removal of Mike Turner from the House intelligence committee, how Biden's farewell address stacked up, and what the locked-up shampoo bottles at CVS say about blue-state governance. Melissa Murray and John Avlon join Tim. show notes John's "How to Fix It" podcast Melissa's "Strict Scrutiny" podcast Biden's farewell address John's book, "Washington's Farewell"
Chapter 1: What are the qualifications of Pam Bondi?
All right. Well, more Bondi today. We'll keep an eye on it. You mentioned John Sauer. I was listening to... your pod from this week at Strict Scrutiny. I can tell you, I've done no coverage of the Solicitor General nominee here at the Bulwark. A lot of bad nominees, you know, so there's only so much time in the day.
But you guys had me cackling, kind of just sort of reviewing some of the briefs that he put forth and the absurdity of this person being the Solicitor General. So I just kind of want to put a quarter in the machine and let you roll on John Sauer as Solicitor General.
Let me just first say, John Sauer isn't an unqualified individual. I mean, he is, from what I understand, he's eminently qualified, all the credentials, all the things. But in his role as a lawyer for Donald Trump, he's actually been asked and has done things that I think would make other lawyers with his credentials pause. Like, so...
One of the things we talked about on the Strict Scrutiny podcast from last week is the brief that John Sauer filed on behalf of Donald Trump in the recently argued TikTok case. So this is the case about whether a law that would require TikTok to either divest its Chinese ownership or go dark in the United States is within Congress's authority to enact. And
This was a case between the federal government and TikTok, but Donald Trump as president-elect decided to file an amicus brief, a friend of the court brief, and John Sauer wrote this brief on his behalf and filed it and put his bar number on it. And it's wild.
It is an absolutely wild, insane... If a student gave this to me as a first-year legal writing exercise, I would pull the student aside and ask them whether or not this was the career for them because... The brief basically says what the court should do is pause this law, pause the effective date of this law to allow Donald Trump to step in because he is a quote unquote consummate dealmaker.
And he should be allowed to intervene here and negotiate with China to figure out a resolution to this. So that is just wild.
This president-elect, instead of all of the usual procedures for how we do policy and how we enact laws and how the court addresses laws that may or may not be invalid because they are constitutionally infirm, let's put all that to the side for a minute and just let America's number one dealmaker step in and handle this. Only he can fix it.
Number one TV dealmaker.
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Chapter 2: What concerns exist regarding Bondi's nomination?
it's in the vein for sure. You know, he took that personally and it's, she's up by 734 votes and he is asking to throw out the votes of 60,000 North Carolinians, including members of the military who he says failed to file their votes properly because they didn't show ID, which according to federal law, you don't have to do. So this is truly shocking.
anti-democratic behavior, you know, silencing a group of individuals, throwing out their votes. And one that makes clear, I think, the effort to steal this election makes clear how important state courts are and are going to be going forward. You know, the North Carolina High Court changed ideological composition in the last election.
It had been under Democratic control, like a majority of Democrats. It then shifted to Republicans. As soon as it shifted to Republican control, it authored a decision that essentially let the state do what it liked relative to partisan gerrymandering, again, to continue consolidating
republican control in that state and they know that if this seat is occupied by a democrat and here the democrat would be the winner allison riggs it's going to be harder for the state high court to continue to ratify republican policy preferences in the state in state court challenges and so the court's really important um not just the supreme court but the supreme court's at the state level and that's why this election is one that they're trying to take away from the people
Yeah, we're going to keep monitoring this one. I was glad you guys have been covering it. DeMarco Elias has been on this as well. So we'll put some resources on that in the show notes for anybody who's in North Carolina and wants to send a message to some of their elected officials.
At least, I guess North Carolina, despite the fact that Donald Trump won, a lot of Democrats did win down ballot, maybe thanks to porn shop Mark Robinson certainly gave us an assist on that.
It's not just Mark Robinson. There's actually been a really active Democratic machine that's been developed and cultivated in North Carolina. They've done a lot to turn out the vote in major urban areas like Asheville and Charlotte, and they deserve a lot of the credits.
I will say to your point on the gerrymandering, the North Carolina one, well, we can do a whole other podcast on gerrymandering. I'm a little less up in arms about it than maybe some in the democracy movement because I think we're gerrymandering ourselves in a lot of ways. But the North Carolina gerrymander is insane.
It's 10 Republicans and four Democrats in Congress in North Carolina in a state where The Democrat won the governor's race. It's a ludicrous breakdown.
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