Americanswers... on 5Live! Why did Pam Bondi, US Attorney General, lose her temper during Epstein Files questioning?

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0:38Lots of questions about the Epstein files this week. Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, clashing in Congress. What we did or didn't learn from her grilling, it was very, very contentious. We also talk about Bill and Hillary Clinton. Why are they insisting on giving their evidence live when they do testify on Epstein before Congress? Plus, has a judge stopped Donald Trump's White House renovations? Does there really only exist now a pile of rubble and nothing more? And does Barack Obama believe in aliens? Sarah, Anthony and I joined Mariana on Five Live. Welcome to AmeriCansons. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News.

1:18You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. Nicolas Maduro yaffed around and he found out.

1:26Marianna Spring:This is a big cover-up, and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.

1:41Marianna Spring:Let's start with a topic that feels like it's kind of my cup of tea. Before we get into everyone's questions, I'd like to know what you think about former US President Barack Obama saying that aliens are real. Barack Obama was doing a quick fire questions on the No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen podcast. Are aliens real? They're real, but I haven't seen them. And they're not being kept in, what is it? Area 51. There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy. And they hid it from the president of the United States. What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president?

2:25where are the aliens?

2:27Marianna Spring:That is worth saying that Obama has now posted on Instagram to clarify his remarks and he said, I'm trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it's got an attention, let me clarify. Statistically, the universe is so vast, the odds are good there's life out there, but the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low. I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. I have to say that a lot of people who like to indulge quite extreme conspiracy theories and other ideas have very much jumped on the alien hype.

2:57Anthony Zurcher:They got to him. They got to him, yeah, exactly, yeah. It's the modern world, isn't it? It is very much your world, Marianne. He's a thoughtful guy who answered the question with a mix of humour and the obvious, really, which is that if there is an infinite universe, it's almost certain that there are other things out there which you might describe as aliens. And the attention that it gets, I find it a bit depressing, actually, because I suspect he knows too.

3:25Marianna Spring:I know, aliens feels a bit lighter than what we're dealing with most of the time in politics. It interests me that he felt that he had to clarify it at all. It shouldn't be that controversial, though, should it? I mean, Justin and Obama are right. The chances are statistically very, very high that there's some kind of life form. That doesn't mean that they're capable of visiting us. It doesn't mean they want to visit us or contact us. It could be plankton or amoebas on some very, very far planet or something. But nonetheless, that would count as an alien life form. And it's I don't know, it's the gripe that they have on everybody's imagination, isn't it?

3:56That just to state something that's almost certainly scientifically true, sends everybody off onto a conspiracy theory kind of festival.

4:04Marianna Spring:Anthony, what do you think of the aliens?

4:06Anthony Zurcher:He gave a typical Obama answer, right? Measured, professorial. And he didn't expect the firestorm that it would set off, even though he probably should have.

4:16Marianna Spring:OK, we have had this email from Benedict from Kent, who says, is it possible that after Pam Bondi's performance this week in front of the Epstein testimony, that Republicans will use it as a reason to refuse to attend such hearings in the future, claiming they represent theatre and a distraction from more important work? Chairman, may I give my answer on that? It's a political joke, and I need to give my answer on that. We'll let the Attorney General respond, and then the gentleman can move to his next question. Within 40 minutes, you asked me a question. Within 40 minutes, Wexner's name was added back.

4:51Within 40 minutes of me catching you red-handed. Red-handed. There was one redaction out of over 4 ,700. Where he's listed as a co-conspirator. And we invited you in. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. You're a failed politician. You need to read on me. Well, so Pam Bondi came perfectly prepared for a very adversarial meeting. And it is true that she frustrated the lawmakers very much. You were trying to ask her questions and they ended up talking over her as well. But I think, frankly, I mean, it sounds a little bit school playground to say it, doesn't it? But if you want to talk about who started it, I think Pam Bondi came with a prepared insult for every single lawmaker on that committee that you could tell that she was ready to fling at them rather than answer their questions.

5:39So, yes, I mean, it was a rather unedifying spectacle. It was difficult to watch and listen to, and it will probably put all sorts of people off congressional hearings. But whether it puts any, certainly Trump administration figures, off going to the Hill, I would doubt it very much. I think it just means that they're going to go absolutely with their armour and their insults ready, and we're going to see far more of this kind of theatre rather than any attempt to really get any answers. I think it's unlikely, to answer the question directly, I think it's unlikely actually they'll refuse to go, and Anthony will know whether they have to go or not.

6:10I mean, you can be mandated to go to a congressional committee. I'm not sure if you are as a member of the White House staff. There's probably a difference there between whether you're a staff member or whether you're a cabinet secretary, et cetera, et cetera. I'm sure Anthony knows. But just in general, these things are often theatre. You think of the hearings that Kamala Harris made her name at when she was a senator in a really naked way. I don't say this as a criticism of her, but I mean, she just set out to make her name asking pointed questions that were all about the question rather than about the answer during a succession of Senate committee hearings.

6:52And that's how they're used by the politicians, actually on both sides. And Pam Bondi's tried to use it as well.

6:57Anthony Zurcher:Yeah, there are some members of the cabinet who are required by law to attend. It's written into the statutes. the Secretary of Treasury, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, a lot of different financial, mostly financial members of the presidential cabinet. They have to show up. The rest show up mostly by tradition, by norms. They're invited and they accept that. That's why Pam Bondi was there. And in theory, they could say, no, I'm not going to show up. And a lot of Trump's cabinet secretaries have been reluctant to come down there.

7:34Anthony Zurcher:They've had appearances much less frequently than past administrations. If they flat out refuse, in theory, Congress could subpoena them, force them to show up. If they didn't show up, they could hold them in contempt of Congress. But we've seen that those contempt of Congress attempts tend to kind of bog down in legal wrangling. And then I guess the ultimate power to answer Benedict's question is that the Senate could in theory impeach these cabinet secretaries for not showing up. Although, again, the political will to do that just isn't there. It's a high bar.

8:07Marianna Spring:On this topic of Pam Bondi, we've got this text in from Amy who says, Hi, Mariana, we all remember Trump's first term for the amount of people around him who resigned or got fired. My question for you and the rest of the AmeriCast team is, who do you think is most likely to resign or be fired this term? Will he feel the pressure to replace Bondi and or Noam? Noam's going. Do you think? Yeah, she's the closest to it right now. By the way, these are proper hostage to fortune. We always get these wrong. This is a big BBC impartiality thing because the reason why I find it really difficult to get on with her is that she shot a dog.

8:44For that reason, I've probably got to recuse myself.

8:47Anthony Zurcher:She wrote about it as a kind of a story about how tough she is in dealing with things. A dog was a bad dog. She shot some goats too, apparently ordinary goats. So, yeah, that backfired. And I think it did cost her some political standing. But she is on on thin ice. I think Trump has been reluctant to push out cabinet secretaries this time around because of all the bad press he got in that first presidential term where a lot of cabinet secretaries were coming and going. And it kind of underlined the chaos in that administration. But it seems like if you see some of the recent reporting around Kristi Noem and some of the stories that have been coming out, some of the criticisms, they have fingerprints from inside the White House.

9:29Anthony Zurcher:People who are sharing these stories to damage her, which shows that that she is she's definitely got a big target on her back when it comes to even people who are close to Donald Trump. The one thing that might savor is the fact that Donald Trump doesn't want to look as though he has been pushed into making a decision like that, either by the media or by political opponents and criticizing him. So he has an instinct to double down and back somebody who's under fire simply because he doesn't want to look as though he's being pushed around. But there will come a point, and I think Kristi Noem is very close to it now, when having somebody like that in the cabinet is doing more political damage than not.

10:07And he'll see that it may be necessary to get rid of her, if only just to draw a line underneath the terrible news that there has been about the immigration raids and the ICE deployments over the course of this year so far already. Getting rid of Kristi Noem would be quite a good way to put a full stop under that, probably.

10:22Anthony Zurcher:There was a cabinet meeting just a few weeks ago, and Kristi Noem was there along with all the other cabinet secretaries. And a lot of us were looking at that meeting as a chance for Donald Trump to offer his defense of Noem and got through the whole meeting. He didn't say anything about her. She didn't even talk, despite many of the cabinet secretaries taking their turns talking. So again, if you're reading tea leaves, if you're looking for palace intrigue, that is a good data point, too. And another kind of palace intrigue point is in the real clear politics, all one word. They've got a really interesting piece, very well resourced piece, I thought, well sourced piece about how Donald Trump, although he refers to the fake news media and suggests that he doesn't believe a word that is in any of the broadcast media or newspapers.

11:05Actually, when his people are criticised in those papers, he takes it really seriously and will ring them and say what's going on, particularly if it's above the fold. in a newspaper. Isn't that whole thing like,

11:17Marianna Spring:I can be mean about my own family, but I don't want anyone else to be mean about that? Exactly, yeah. It's sort of that. And it's worth reminding people that Christine Ohm's title is she's Secretary of Homeland Security, isn't she? Which is why, yeah, the various things we're talking about fall under her responsibility. And with Pam Bondi, do any of you think that she's nearing her? Because I mean, particularly everything around the Epstein files, if you were Donald Trump, you might be thinking, ooh, how helpful is she being to me here or not? There may come a point when the administration needs to look for a sacrifice over the Epstein files and think that maybe the one way to stop everybody talking about them endlessly is to get rid of somebody.

11:53But that, of course, you see, the same hand bond at this point would be to suggest she had done something wrong in preparing the files for release and that maybe, you know, an extra two million documents ought to have been released all along. So that's a little bit tricky there. And she has been extremely willing to do Donald Trump's bidding when it comes to going after some of his political opponents and using the judicial system do that. Now, that's not yet been very effective, but that's because it's been stymied by grand juries and by judges in some cases. But what you have got is a Department of Justice under Pan Bondi as the attorney general, who is prepared to just act at the whim of the president, which is not constitutionally the way it's been normally, but it does mean that she is particularly helpful to him in that regard.

12:34Anthony Zurcher:I was just going to say, after her testimony that we played the excerpt from earlier, Donald Trump was very quick to talk about what a great job she did and how proud he was of her. So, you know, we talked about the lack of any kind of defense of Kristi Noem. Well, here we have the exact opposite, Donald Trump going out and praising her. I think he likes a fighter. I think he probably likes how she handles that testimony before Congress, where she goes on the attack and belittles everyone asking her questions. So, yeah, the Epstein thing, she has definitely muddled the response of the administration, costs them some political capital on it.

13:11Anthony Zurcher:But if we're going through cabinet secretaries right now who are on thin ice, I think she's still pretty solid.

13:17Marianna Spring:Right. Another question that we've got. Gina says this. This is a voice note from her. What do you think is the motivation behind the Clintons choosing to testify in public at the end of this month? And what do you think they might disclose? Yeah, I mean, I think he thinks, I think Bill particularly thinks. This is testifying about Epstein, isn't it? He was testifying about Eckstein, and they'd been asked to do it before, and they'd said no. And they changed their tune when it seemed that they were going to be threatened with some sort of legal action, potentially contempt of Congress, which is a serious thing, can get you put in jail.

13:54And specifically, some Democrats seemed to be part of that. So they were beginning to feel that they were on pretty thin ice. but they've kind of turned the tables on everyone by saying, okay, well, not only will we testify, we want to do it in public. And I think Bill probably thinks he can do it in public because it is potentially embarrassing to Donald Trump, but also he gets the chance to put his side of it. And for quite a lot of these people who were involved with Epstein, but there's no evidence they did anything wrong or indeed saw anything wrong happening, one of the kind of missing pieces of all of this is their ability to come out and say, this is what actually happened, This is what I saw.

14:34This is why I was there. And I suspect that Bill Clinton still has enough faith in his own abilities. Whether he's right, of course, is a completely different matter. But I suspect he's still has enough faith in his abilities to think he can make this work for him. But also, I think it sets a very important precedent because, well, Anthony will correct me if I'm wrong on this. But I think this is the first former president who has agreed to go and give evidence like this. Once he has, it makes it much harder for future former presidents to refuse to give evidence, which, of course, yes, we're looking at you, Donald Trump.

15:03Anthony Zurcher:There have been some instances of presidents testifying before Congress, but certainly nothing in a kind of an adversarial sort of way that we see here. And so I think that Sarah is exactly right. They want it all out in the public. They don't want Republicans to cherry pick the most controversial and most inflammatory bits and leak those to the press because that's what happens behind closed doors. And it's not just one side or the other. Both Democrats and Republicans do it. We've seen Democrats leaking bits and pieces of the Epstein documents that have been released to Congress ahead of time, ones that point the finger more directly at Donald Trump.

15:44Anthony Zurcher:So that's part of the political game here. And I don't think the Clintons want to get caught up in that. I think they want the American public to see it all kind of played out under the floodlights.

15:53Marianna Spring:And we did do an episode about this where we kind of discussed particularly how Hillary Clinton has been kind of catnip for extreme conspiracy theories, very different to obviously the real allegations. we're talking about relating to Epstein and that maybe might be part of their motivation or not. OK, Neil from Ashton Underline in Greater Manchester has emailed us and he says, I recently read a post on social media that a federal judge has stopped the renovation work currently being conducted at the White House, leaving an unsightly mound of rubble in the place where Donald Trump would like a shiny ballroom.

16:22Marianna Spring:Is this information correct or have I unwittingly fallen for one of the many rage bait articles that Mariana has frequently warned me of? Drumroll, Anthony, is this true?

16:31Anthony Zurcher:Well, a federal judge, Judge Richard Leon, has weighed in and is reviewing the case. Although, you know, when I'm at the White House, I still hear jackhammers going and construction taking place. Now, whether that's just the excavation and the clearing and not the building of the new building that's going to go in there. The judge has been somewhat reluctant to step in and stop any kind of further demolition because once it's been torn down, it's been torn down. But I think the building hasn't started yet. The actual construction of the ballroom, we've seen some mock-ups of what it might look like, as big as the White House itself, a towering building that will dominate the one side of it.

17:16Anthony Zurcher:But those are still kind of the blueprints. We haven't begun to get to the actual constructing yet. Yeah, people are going to get a real shock, I think, if it's built to Donald Trump's plans when they finally see it. There's a lot of people who agree. I don't know if Anthony is one of them, but who are in and around the White House who think, yeah, they do need a bigger space. I think it's pretty obvious from some of the events and press conferences and things I've attended that they need a big sort of ballroom sized space. But it's grown bigger and bigger in Donald Trump's imagination and in his plans since it was conceived of.

17:49And it is now, yeah, practically the size of the rest of the White House. And so when it is eventually unveiled, if it's constructed as he was, I think people are going to get a real fright when they see it.