During and right after Pam Bondi's House testimony Wednesday, I flipped on Fox News and Newsmax to see how they were covering it. I was expecting to see a celebration of how the attorney general really put those America-hating libs in their place. To my surprise, I did not. I saw mostly ads, to be honest, but the little programming I did catch was devoted entirely to the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping story.

Disappointed, I flipped back to MS NOW and didn't think much of it. But Wednesday evening, The Daily Beast reported that my experience was not aberrational: Bondi testified for about five hours, and Fox News ran roughly 10 minutes of it live.

It's an old, old Murdochian ploy: When there's news that doesn't suit the agenda, just ignore it. I've seen this movie many times. Back in a different era, Rupert's favorite politician was Al D'Amato, the hacky and corrupt Republican senator from New York. Whenever there was a new allegation about D'Amato's ethics, or a Senate report reviewing same, it would be on the front page of The New York Times and get prominent play in the Daily News—and in the New York Post, there usually wasn't a word.

To complement The New Republic's March 2026 issue, "What Should the Democrats Do?" our writers examine how the Democrats can reestablish themselves as the party of and for the people, hone their messaging, and push the electorate to be more progressive.

Fox's near silence on Bondi is an admission that the hearing was an indefensible horror show. And it gets worse if you really think about it for a few minutes. Think of all the planning and strategizing that went into that performance. Employees of the Department of Justice, working on our dime, spent hours prepping Bondi on exactly how to insult each and every Democratic member of the committee. They came up with the idea of requiring each House member to have an individual log-in to peruse the Epstein files so the DOJ could spy on them. They spent hours assembling Bondi's little burn book. She had to have been coached for hours about exactly how to ignore the questions and try to turn the tables on her interrogators. In other words: Her aides, whose salaries we pay, probably thought this would be great. That she'd walk away with a catalog of sound-bite knockout punches.

Instead, Bondi walked away with the image that will haunt her for the rest of her life: her back turned to those Jeffrey Epstein victims as Representative Pramila Jayapal asked them to stand and raise their hands "if you have still not been able to meet with the DOJ"—and they all raised their hands. That image looked horrible Wednesday; as more and more details about the Epstein story leak out in the coming weeks and months, it's only going to look worse.

And yet, for all this? In substantive terms, her performance at that hearing may not even have been the worst thing Bondi did this week! The morning after the hearing, she fired Gail Slater, the head of the department's antitrust division. Slater actually had a decent reputation—she was part of the populist-MAGA anti-monopoly movement, and she brought a high-profile case against Google over its monopolization of the ad tech market.

Many progressive anti-monopolists were cheering for Slater. Said Senator Elizabeth Warren upon hearing this news: "A small army of MAGA-aligned lawyers and lobbyists have been trying to sell off merger approvals that will increase prices and harm innovation to the highest bidder. Every antitrust case in front of the Trump Justice Department now reeks of double-dealing—Ticketmaster's stock is already surging." That last sentence is true. If you're interested, you can read here about why this is so bad. The bottom line is that Bondi's firing of Slater is a big nail in the coffin of the idea that Trumpian right-wing populism is willing to take on powerful interests. It may—but only as long as they're designated enemies of Trump.

To circle back to Fox News: If they're going to follow the old Murdoch edict of ignoring all bad news, pretty soon they're going to be reduced to airing nothing but scare stories about woke Olympic athletes and Spanish-speaking superstars.

It's not even clear Bondi had the worst week among Trump Cabinet officials. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth got seriously pulverized twice this week. First, when a grand jury refused to indict six Democrats for their earlier video reminding soldiers that they had a duty to disobey illegal orders; as Chesa Boudin and Eric Fish point out in a Times op-ed today, grand juries convened by the mighty Justice Department almost never fail to return an indictment. Second, when a federal judge blocked Hegseth from punishing one of the six, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, writing that Hegseth had grossly violated Kelly's First Amendment rights. "Rather than trying to shrink the First Amendment liberties of retired servicemembers, Secretary Hegseth and his fellow Defendants might reflect and be grateful for the wisdom and expertise that retired servicemembers have brought to public discussions and debate on military matters in our Nation over the past 250 years," Judge Richard Leon wrote. "If so, they will more fully appreciate why the Founding Fathers made free speech the first Amendment in the Bill of Rights!"

And Kristi Noem had to endure the indignity of seeing rival Tom Homan, the border czar, make her ICE-men goeth out of Minneapolis. Thursday night, The Wall Street Journal posted a long and devastating story about the mayhem at the Department of Homeland Security under Noem and her rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski. It's the kind of Washington story that appears only when inside sources decide to start running to reporters to spill saucy details they once sat on—a clear sign that no one is scared of her anymore.

None of these people, of course, belongs in a high position in the federal government. They're psychopathic monsters. There's no doubt Bondi and her advisers think she knocked a home run on Wednesday. But one day, we'll all learn what she's hiding about the Epstein story. Can't wait for that hearing.

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Last week's quiz: Lights, camera, kick-off! The Super Bowl in history and culture.

1. About what percentage of American TV households watch the Super Bowl most years?

A. Low 30s

B. Low 40s

C. High 40s

D. Mid 50s

Answer: B, low 40s. This year's game had a 39.4 ratings share, just missing 40, according to Nielsen. It seems 124.9 million watched the game, and a few more, 128.2 million, watched Bad Bunny's halftime show. Kid Rock's alternate "freedom" halftime show, by the way, found 5.7 million real Americans.

2. Which stadium has hosted the most Super Bowls (eight)?

A. The Rose Bowl, Pasadena

B. The Orange Bowl, Miami

C. The Superdome, New Orleans

D. The Coliseum, Los Angeles

Answer: C, the Superdome. New Orleans the city has hosted 11 Super Bowls, but three of those were played in rickety old Tulane Stadium, before the Superdome was built. Miami has also hosted 11, but five were in the old Orange Bowl, while six have been in the newer stadium, which has annoyingly been known by several different names over the years, and who cares.

3. What company has run the most Super Bowl ads since the game's inception in 1967?

A. Coca-Cola

B. Ford

C. Frito-Lay (includes Doritos)

D. Budweiser

Answer: D, Bud, and by a mile. For some reason, the website I consulted (I hadn't noticed this) went up only through 2021, but Bud had run 142 total ads, with Pepsi running a very distant second at 97, followed by McDonalds at 54. There's no good reason to think that's changed.

4. Everybody remembers the infamous 2004 Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction. But at that same halftime show, another performer drew the ire of the national Veterans of Foreign Wars for wearing an American flag poncho that was slit along the sides and that he casually tossed to the ground. Who was this performer?

A. Justin Timberlake

B. Nelly

C. Kid Rock

D. Chad Kroeger of Nickelback

Answer: Ready? It's C, Kid Rock! Yes, today's MAGA avenger was yesterday's America-hater. 

5. Back in the Stone Age, before the halftime show became a thing, the shows just consisted of the usual marching bands, spiked with a little showbiz flair. For example, Super Bowl I featured the University of Arizona marching band, the Grambling State University band, and a drill team from an Anaheim high school. Who added the showbiz flair?

A. Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé

B. The cast of Man of La Mancha

C. Doc Severinsen

D. Al Hirt

Answer: D, Al Hirt. He was a trumpeter, for you young'uns. He would reappear at Super Bowls IV and VI, alongside Carol Channing. And in between those two Channing performances came Anita Bryant, the proto-MAGA orange juice spokeswoman. Who lived long enough, I notice, to see Donald Trump reelected. She died at peace.

6. According to a Quinnipiac poll from October 2025, 64 percent of Americans prefer moving the Super Bowl to:

A. a Saturday night

B. President's Day weekend

C. a more traditional afternoon start

D. Mexico City

Answer: B, President's Day weekend. According to a USA Today article before the big game, a record 26.2 million Americans planned on taking Super Bowl Monday off. I think they should just move it to Saturday.

Anyway, not to toot my horn too much, but last week I predicted a 27-17 Seattle win. Not far off at all from the actual 29-13.

This week's quiz: Hail to the Thief: Since this weekend does in fact bring President's Day, let's consider some of the lesser presidents.

1. Who is the only president to have been kicked out of his own party while he was in office?

A. Martin Van Buren

B. John Tyler

C. Chester Arthur

D. William Howard Taft

2. Which president delivered the longest-ever inaugural address?

A. James Monroe

B. Andrew Jackson

C. William Henry Harrison

D. Franklin Pierce

3. Lincoln was the first bearded president. Andrew Johnson, who took over when Lincoln was shot, was clean-shaven. After him, how many presidents in a row sported some sort of facial hair?

A. Four

B. Five

C. Six

D. Seven

4. Which president suffered from esotropia—that is, he was slightly cross-eyed? You can sort of tell if you look hard at the most ubiquitous photo of him. 

A. James Buchanan

B. Andrew Johnson

C. James Garfield

D. Benjamin Harrison

5. Warren G. Harding, in letters to his longtime mistress, used the code word "Jerry" when he was referring to what?

A. The White House butler who arranged and covered for their assignations

B. His wife's lover, a prominent senator

C. His chief bagman in the Teapot Dome Scandal

D. His penis

6. Which of the below was an eccentric trait of Calvin Coolidge's?

A. He kept a menagerie of exotic pets in the White House.

B. He slept 11 hours a day.

C. He kept a mechanical horse in the White House, which he rode for exercise.

D. He enjoyed hitting the Secret Service call button on his desk and then hiding under it and watching the agents panic.

Odd duck, Silent Cal. Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com.

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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