Moments after stating “looks don’t matter” when you’re in politics, Donald Trump made an awkward quip about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s appearance at a marathon meeting this week.
“I look at Pam,” Trump said near the beginning of his nearly 200-minute cabinet gathering on Tuesday. “I would never say she’s beautiful, because that’s gonna be the end of my political career.”
The remark was met with laughter around the table as other members of the cabinet looked on.
As with a number of his most loyal supporters over the years, Trump has at times heaped praised on Bondi, recently insisting she was doing “a great job” despite criticism of her handling of the Epstein files.
Trump’s history with Bondi goes back over a decade, to when she was serving as Florida’s first female attorney general. In 2019, she was hired to help fend off his first impeachment investigation, over allegations of a quid pro quo agreement to pressure Ukrainian officials to go after the Biden family.
In November that year the president responded to The Apprentice alum Katrina Campins, who called Bondi a “beautiful lady” and a “class act.”
“I agree Katrina,” Trump tweeted. “Pam Bondi is a great woman!”
In February this year Trump complimented the appearance of both Bondi’s partner John Wakefield and her mother, when was sworn in as the 87th attorney general.
“I just want to introduce her very, very handsome husband,” he said, as the couple chuckled awkwardly to his side. “I hate being around him. He looks too good.”
Turning his attention to Bondi’s mom Patsy, Trump added: “Mother, look how good you look, huh? Look how good...”
A month later in March, during a Women’s History Month event at the White House, the president introduced Bondi at the podium with fulsome praise for her performance in the job.
“You talk about strong women,” Trump said. “This is a strong woman. Remember, they were saying, ‘He doesn't like strong women.’ That may be true. But if that's true, I'm in deep trouble, because I'm surrounded.
“I've got the strongest women. And this is a beautiful, strong, wonderful woman: attorney general Pam Bondi.
“But yesterday, you know, she was talking about these guys that like burning down cars and plants and everything else. And I was watching her on television. She said: ‘I'm going to get you. We're going to find you, and you're going to suffer.’ And I say, ‘Man, I don't want her after me.’
“Pam is fantastic. Thank you very much, Pam. Really good, amazing.”
More recently, in July, Trump showed his support again to quell a MAGA firestorm over his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.
“What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” Trump wrote on Truth Social after criticism from some his supporters. “They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!”
And just last week, the president repeated his previous claims Bondi would “go down as the greatest attorney general”.
Bondi’s ability has also been celebrated by other members of Trump’s top team, including his chief of staff Susie Wiles.
“You know, she looks like Barbie,” Wiles told The New Yorker recently. “She’s blond and beautiful, and I think people will underestimate her because of how she looks.
“But she’s got nerves of steel, and she has stood up to some withering situations with a fair amount of grace.”
On Bondi’s relationship with Trump, she added: “I have a long one. Hers is longer.”
Bondi raised eyebrows herself this week for the unusual way she referred to Trump.
When the attorney general attended the same marathon cabinet meeting on Tuesday, like other members of the president’s team, she praised him.
But it was the way in which she did it that drew attention, using the title “president” as if it was Trump’s first name: “Thank you, President.”
As one social media asked on X earlier in the month: “Why does Pam Bondi refer to The president as ‘President’? not ‘Mr. President’ or ‘President Trump’, just ‘President’?”
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