United States Attorney General Pam Bondi tries extremely hard to project strength and confidence, but somehow always seems to come across as hostile, cruel, and dismissive, critics note.
So, in remarks at an event in Memphis, Tennessee, on Monday, March 23, where President Donald Trump and his top officials gathered to celebrate the “success” of Trump’s Memphis Safe Task Force, a so-called violent crime-fighting initiative, it’s unclear whether she was trying to curry favor with deputy chief of staff and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller or slyly throwing him under the bus.
Either way, information on Miller and his status as the “architect” behind Trump’s vicious anti-immigration policy has been making news for months now, but Bondi revealed something else, too, placing Miller squarely inside the mess at the Department of Homeland Security, putting him behind Trump’s decision to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and the National Guard into American cities, mainly run by Democrats.
“I think the unsung hero in all of this is Stephen Miller,” Bondi crowed as a smiling Trump sat beside her, nodding his head and clapping at one point.
“Stephen is the architect of making all of these plans work. Stephen, thank you, thank you,” the former Florida politician and Trump’s ex-personal lawyer beamed and gushed.
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Or did she? Sinister speculation erupted on social media about her true intent in identifying Miller as the driving force behind the Guard deployment last year, which is still underway in Memphis.
“’The architect,’” this Threads user stated with a laughing emoji, “making sure the world knows it is him! Not my idea!” Another agreed, “It’ll be an absolute blood bath. No accountability, pass the buck.”
This Threads user joked, “Rats are starting to jump ship” with a laughing emoji, too.
At the same event, when a long-winded Trump was offering up yet more justifications for waging a war against Iran, a photographer with Memphis ABC 7 caught something unusual on camera.
A tired-looking Miller, at one point seeming to struggle to stay awake, suddenly let out a long sigh in the middle of Trump’s speech.
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Miller, who’s been orbiting Trump for more than 10 years since before the president’s first run for office in 2015, is an influential power broker in the Trump White House and in conservative circles. He’s been described as “relentless,” “combative,” and one of the administration’s “most powerful figures,” according to the BBC.
PBS reported Miller was one of the first people to endorse Trump’s 2015 campaign for president as an aide to Trump’s first term and much-maligned attorney general and former Alabama Tea Party Sen. Jeff Sessions.
While working with Sessions, Miller helped defeat a bipartisan immigration bill in 2013 that would have helped millions of undocumented migrants become legal.
Meanwhile, back in Memphis, The Tennessee Lookout reported that since the task force started operating last fall, it’s made 7,342 arrests and seized more than 1,200 guns. And while there’s been a drop in crime in the city, the trend was already underway before Trump deployed the National Guard.
But the president still claimed credit for it.
“In another two months, three months, I think … you’re going to be an almost crime-free city,” Trump bragged in touting a 43 percent drop in the crime rate in Memphis that he claims is attributable to the task force.