This is a Warning
Watching Pam Bondi this morning, and revisiting some of the transcript of her testimony, i’ve come to the bleak conclusion that the Epstein debacle will never be resolved. The guilty run, free, seemingly absolved of any wrongdoing, but we know better. The victims know better.
Bondi wasn’t just combative. She wasn’t just evasive. She was openly defiant of accountability. Asked a direct question, a number, not an opinion, and she refused to answer it. She filibustered. She attacked. She pivoted. She treated oversight like an inconvenience instead of a constitutional obligation.
And she did it with the confidence of someone who believes there will be no consequences. She behaves as if there will be no consequences.
That’s the part that should shake people to their core.
When a sitting Attorney General behaves as if she has no fear of reprisal, no concern for voters, no respect for institutional checks, no hesitation about stonewalling Congress, it signals something deeper than arrogance. It signals security. It signals a belief that this power structure isn’t temporary. That this isn’t a four-year experiment. That Trump isn’t a four- year experiment. That the machinery protecting her will remain intact long after headlines fade.
That’s what’s frightening.
It’s not the theatrics. It’s not even the hostility.
It’s the certainty.
The certainty that no matter how brazen the deflection, no matter how obvious the evasion, the system will hold, for them.
And when leaders start behaving as though political power transfers are optional, as though accountability is quaint, as though consequences are theoretical, that is not just unprofessionalism.
That is a warning.
—Michael Jochum
Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.