Transcript
A (0:00)
Her stature with the president and with those around him was really only going one direction, and that was down.
B (0:08)
Hey, everybody. And welcome to here's the scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vesugian. Today on the show, hospital costs have been outpacing inflation for years and patients, they're sinking in medical debt. The latest report from our Unaffordable America series. Plus, changes at DHS to help FEMA get disaster funding out faster. And what is in your Easter basket? The answer is going to surprise you. Up first, though, in a true social post today, President Trump said that Attorney General Pam Bondi would be quote, unquote, transitioning to a new job in the private sector and that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch will step in to serve as acting attorney general. So while the president called Bondi a, quote, unquote, great American patriot and a loyal friend who faithfully served as my attorney general over the past year, senior administration officials tell NBC News that the president fired her after becoming frustrated with her in recent days. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. So I want to bring in NBC News senior White House correspondent Garrett Hake. Hey, Garrett.
A (1:16)
Hello.
B (1:17)
Okay. Pam Bondi is out, longtime loyalist of the president. She was literally at the Supreme Court with him yesterday for the birthright citizenship hearings. What do we know about her firing, per the timing and why?
A (1:35)
Well, she spent a good portion of the day with him yesterday. She went with him to the Supreme Court, and she was here at the White House late last night for his speech on Iran. But, Yasmin, I think the writing has been on the wall here for at least a couple of days that this was going to happen. Whether the president pulled the trigger at some point during their day together yesterday or whether he did it this morning as something we still don't know just yet. But we started to get reports about some kind of confrontation, heated conversation that they had had in front of other people at the White House last week. We had been getting reports that the president was calling around asking about her with other Cabinet members, with donors, with friends. Those are typically signs that he's ready to move on from somebody going back to the first term certainly had been the case in this term. And really no one from the White House was stepping up to defend her or suggest that these reports were wrong or the president wasn't frustrated. What we were getting from the White House was essentially she's still here today, you know, with this sort of emphasis on the idea of today and that this firing, which I think is really what this amounts to, despite the language from the President's Truth Social post was probably gonna happen sooner than later.
