U.S. Attorney General Choice: Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi

Bondi, Florida's first woman attorney general for eight years from 2011-2019, was part of Trump's defense team during his first impeachment trial and supported his false claims of fraud following the 2020 election. She's remained in Trump's orbit since then, continuing to advise him on legal matters.

In announcing Bondi as his new choice, Trump signaled the role he expects her to play. "For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans - Not anymore. ... Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again."

By fighting crime, he means going after his political enemies. Bondi has loyally promised that "When Republicans take back the White House" and the Department of Justice, "the prosecutors will be prosecuted -- the bad ones -- the investigators will be investigated."

Bondi is a partner at Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm that had been run by Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles and whose founder, Brian Ballard, is a top Trump fundraiser. She is co-chair of the law and justice division at the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute. Thrust onto the national stage, Pam Bondi is not a household name. To learn more about her, we went to an award-winning journalist in her home state of Florida.

Guest - Scott Maxwell is a three-time-a-week columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. He joined the Sentinel newsroom as a reporter in 1998, and started writing his column in 2002. He has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society of Newspaper Editors and others. Before coming to Orlando, Scott wrote for the Winston-Salem Journal and the Chapel Hill Herald, after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Journalism.

----

Next FTC Chairman: Business Friendly Approach Or Big Tech Anti-Trust Enforcement

President-elect Donald Trump last week named Andrew Ferguson as the next chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Ferguson is already one of the FTC’s five commissioners, currently consisting of 3 Democrats and 2 Republicans. Ferguson replaces FTC Chair Lina Khan, a vocal critic of Big Tech.

Antitrust laws are designed to promote fair competition by prohibiting monopolistic practices, unfair restraints on trade, and other behaviors that harm consumers or stifle innovation. The FTC plays a key role in enforcing these laws. It investigates businesses for anticompetitive practices, reviews mergers and acquisitions for potential harm to market competition and takes legal action to prevent or rectify violations.

With Trump’s recent nomination of Gail Slater as the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for antitrust, some predicted that the incoming administration may continue Lina Khan’s tough stance on companies like Google and Apple. But many leading Republicans prefer a more business-friendly approach to antitrust enforcement that would avoid hampering Big Tech's dealmaking and acquisitions.

Other top contenders for the FTC chairmanship were Melissa Holyoak, a Republican commissioner and former Utah solicitor general and Mark Meador, a former DOJ and FTC official who has served as an antitrust policy adviser to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).

Guest - Laurel Kilgour from the American Economic Liberties Project in DC. Lauren leads the Project’s team of policy analysts and experts to produce research and policy briefs, with a focus on antitrust issues impacting economic liberties.