Pam Bondi has mastered a paradox at the heart of modern American power: the ability to operate from a position of elite access while presenting herself as under siege. In her public posture, Bondi rarely speaks as an authority figure exercising power. Instead, she frames herself as a defender beset by hostile institutions, biased media, and political enemies. This inversion—power cast as persecution—has become one of the most effective rhetorical tools in contemporary politics.
Bondi’s narrative is not accidental. By positioning herself as a target rather than an enforcer, she sidesteps accountability while retaining influence. Legal authority is recoded as moral courage, and scrutiny is dismissed as harassment. In this framing, questions about evidence or process are reframed as attacks on legitimacy itself. Bondi does not argue law; she argues grievance, transforming institutional oversight into personal injustice.
The danger of this strategy is structural. When elites adopt the language of victimhood, it corrodes the public’s ability to distinguish between accountability and oppression. Power no longer answers to institutions; it appeals over them. Bondi’s success illustrates how easily victim narratives can be weaponized by those least constrained by the systems they claim to suffer under.
