The limits of power

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday, April 8th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. 

Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Time now for Washington Wednesday!

Joining us is political scientist Hunter Baker. He is a WORLD Opinions Contributor and our Washington Wednesday regular. 

Hunter, good morning!

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning!

EICHER: Well, Pam Bondi’s tenure as attorney general officially came to an end April 2nd. The New York Times reports that the day before, she had a car ride with the president to the Supreme Court for oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case—and there she made a final appeal for a more graceful exit from the Justice Department. That effort, ultimately of course, fell short.

The president moved very quickly—installing her deputy, Todd Blanche, as acting attorney general the same day. Bondi says she will remain on through the end of the month to help with the transition before she moves into the private sector.

So with that transition well underway, Hunter, the question now is: who’s next? 

We’re hearing a range of names—Acting AG Todd Blanche, to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, and to the U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, formerly of Fox News. 

So what does that list tell you about what the president is looking for?

BAKER: These are all Trump loyalists. I think at least two of them have served as his personal lawyer. I think that that was true of Todd Blanche in the past, for sure. And I think of Harmeet Dhillon as well. And of course, Lee Zeldin—really interesting, highly effective in the cabinet as the EPA Administrator, he’s gone after a lot of regulations that he thinks are counterproductive and a drag on the economy. Also a guy who was able to get elected to Congress in New York, and you know, made a really serious run at the governor’s office.

Harmeet Dhillon is fascinating, just as sort of a—you might almost call her an anti–social justice warrior or something like that—on the question of civil rights. Which is to say, she fights for what I would call the traditional understanding of civil rights, instead of maybe what we call kind of a woke understanding of civil rights. And she’s been effective, I think, in kind of bringing that issue to the fore. Basically, you know, how do we understand civil rights? Do we understand it as something that allows courts and institutions to discriminate in favor of a protected class of people, or is it kind of designed to protect everybody? She’s embraced more that latter interpretation.

Can’t help but notice that Jeanine Pirro is under consideration, and when I see her name it’s just like a return to Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice. She was in the past one, of People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People, and a couple of different times had those judge shows, you know—Judge Jeanine, people’s court–type shows. And here she is, she’s a U.S. Attorney right now.

And so, of course, we have Pete Hegseth over in defense. So we’re kind of getting a celebrity sort of cabinet here if she becomes the attorney general.

MAST: Well let’s talk about what went wrong for Bondi. You’ve got frustration over the pace of prosecutions—especially involving the president’s political enemies; you’ve got questions about how she handled high-profile issues like the Epstein files; and then a broader concern about her effectiveness as a communicator, both inside the administration and on television—which is a big deal for President Trump. 

How do you see it, Hunter?

BAKER: I think that Attorney General is a really tough role to fill in a Trump administration. If you look back to his first administration—2016—AL senator Jeff Sessions was a big supporter of his, and he gets in and you immediately have the Russia probe, and Sessions recused himself.

Trump was furious. He was absolutely beside himself that Sessions recused himself instead of basically acting as a kind of a shield or protector for Trump himself from that probe.

Robert Mueller was able to load up his team with partisan Democrats, even though Mueller himself had been a career Republican. And they really went after the president on the Russian probe, they ate up a nice chunk of his first administration doing that, and Trump never forgot it. He was really angry.

Bill Barr then, took over, who had at a previous point been the attorney general. And I think that he actually did a tremendous job, I think that he helped Trump to navigate that situation with the Russia probe, and I think he was a good AG.

But he had a falling out with Trump over the 2020 election because Barr was not willing to say that there had been election fraud or that he was aware of any, and the result was kind of the death of that relationship and Trump’s respect for Barr.

So then you bring in Pam Bondi, total Trump loyalist, somebody who comes into office just attached to his hip. But he was very dissatisfied because, a. he felt that she didn’t do a good job with the Epstein files. Most notably she made the mistake of saying, “I’ve got the list of his clients right here on my desk,” and of course did not have any such thing, and that created all kinds of cynicism and skepticism and bad feeling when that happened.

I think he feels, rightly, that during Biden’s administration that he was targeted with a number of legal actions. I think that the term “lawfare” is a fair term to describe what happened to him during that interim period, and he kind of decided that when he gets back into office, there’s going to be payback. And I think that he has wanted Pam Bondi to sort of act like his chief instrument of payback.

But the problem with that is that we still have a legal system that, by and large, works. And if she doesn’t have the goods, she’s not going to be able to get people, and she hasn’t been. And I think that Trump grew frustrated, and he wants to try somebody else.

EICHER: I have to say Hunter, there was one name missing from that list that really came as a surprise to me: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. I thought he might be the guy for AG to lead the Justice Department, particularly given that he had just approved legislation to start the process of renaming Palm Beach International Airport after Donald Trump. It’s a nice little airport right across the lagoon from Mar-a-Lago, and it appears it is well on it's way to changing from airport code PBI to DJT. 

So in all seriousness, why do you think DeSantis isn’t a part of this conversation?

BAKER: I wonder if Ron DeSantis wants it. But the other question is, how does Trump feel about DeSantis?

In 2024, a lot of us—including me—thought that DeSantis would effectively challenge Trump in the primaries. And you know, Elon Musk with his new Twitter—which would become X—seemed to be on DeSantis’s side and kind of promoting his run. Obviously it didn’t work out, he was not able to overcome Trump, but let me say this: There is a case to be made that Ron DeSantis is the best governor in the United States of America. He may be the most effective politician of any kind in the United States. 

When you look at what he’s done with Florida, I mean, just look at how the voters feel. You’re talking about a guy who came in on the thinnest of margins, and through his subsequent actions—which included taking on Disney and fighting the COVID consensus—became vastly more popular.

He turned a state that was clearly purple—Florida went for Obama at least once—into a solidly red state. And I think that’s just because of his performance and his shrewdness as a governor.

So I’m sorry that he’s not being considered for AG, but again, I’m not sure if it’s the right thing for him.

MAST: Well he is term limited, so if not attorney general, where does DeSantis fit right now or in the near future? Do you see a realistic move to something like the federal bench—or even the Supreme Court? Depending on how the timing works out, he certainly has the education for it, if not the precise resume.

BAKER: It’s a really interesting question. In the past, you would see major politicians appointed to the Supreme Court. So, for example, maybe the most famous liberal Supreme Court justice ever, Earl Warren, had been the governor of California. 

And we could find other similar examples. For that matter, Sandra Day O’Connor was in the Arizona state legislature prior to becoming a Supreme Court justice.

But for a long time now, we have had sort of like almost a legal aristocracy of merit where everybody understands who are the biggest brains in law on the left and who are the biggest brains in law on the right. And they go on the different lists, and then when somebody becomes president, they tend to defer to those lists.

And I think that Trump did that with the Federalist Society recommendations in his first term. But now I think that he’s thinking again about what he would want to do. So maybe there’s an opening for somebody like a DeSantis or a Cruz.

EICHER: Alright, well let’s shift to Europe, Hunter. The vice president arrived in Hungary yesterday to give a political boost to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. He is facing a serious political challenge after more than a decade in power. Parliamentary elections are this weekend and he is running behind. 

What do you think is at stake in that election—for Hungary, and for the broader conservative movement in Europe?

BAKER: It's really a clash of political philosophies at stake. So Orbán has kind of you know, constantly thumbed his nose at the European Union. He has not wanted to take in refugees and immigrants.

And his logic has been that there is something like a Christian, national, Hungarian culture. And in his mind, if you don’t manage immigration properly—and there are concerns of this type in the United States, you hear it in our own debates—if you don’t manage it properly, then the idea is that that native culture, that Western civilization–based culture, somehow will be overcome by people who have different values, different ideas, or who just don’t care about your culture at all.

So he has continuously maintained this stance, whereas the EU has had more of an internationalist modern liberalism—sort of a view of the human being that is less concerned with maintaining those local cultures.

So that’s what’s at stake. 

He’s been very successful so far, and I think the reason the vice president is trying to help him is because he has identified himself with that same sort of view of culture. And I think that if he were to run for president later, he would probably embrace that same sort of attitude.

EICHER: Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University. 

Hunter, always great to chat with you each week. We'll talk to you next time. 

BAKER: Thank you.

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