The Networks Promote Democrats vs. 'Combative' Pam Bondi

Tim Graham on Oct 10, 2025

One way you can demonstrate how the liberal networks run on dunking Republicans is how they cover congressional hearings. For weeks, House Oversight Committee chair James Comer has been probing how the Biden White House staff covered up former President Joe Biden's mental decline, and all the liberal TV networks can't locate it.

But on Tuesday, Senate Democrats were throwing hardballs at Attorney General Pam Bondi, and CNN and MSNBC were covering it live, and then the evening newscasts all ran stories. Republicans are in control of Congress, and Democrats are still considered the more newsworthy members.

NPR's online headline for its evening news report was "Democrats press Bondi over concerns DOJ is being weaponized to target Trump's foes." PBS's headline was similar: "Bondi dodges Democrats' questions on weaponizing DOJ in Senate hearing."

Few things are more frustrating to Republicans than the falsehood that Biden's Justice Department was pristinely independent and wasn't weaponized against Trump -- and his staffers and supporters, not to mention against pro-lifers, traditional Catholics, and parents who disturb liberals at school board meetings.

On "NBC Nightly News," anchor Tom Llamas touted "that fiery hearing on Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats grilling Attorney General Pam Bondi over DOJ investigations and questions over the Epstein files." Reporter Kelly O'Donnell spotlighted Democrats Dick Durbin and Richard Blumenthal. At least, they included Bondi's reply to Durbin about deploying the National Guard to Chicago: "They are working to protect you. I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump." But the Republican half of the hearing drew a few words at the end.

On ABC's "World News Tonight," reporter Pierre Thomas ran sound bites from five combative Democrats, including Sen. Mazie Hirono quipping that Trump turned the Justice Department into the "Department of Revenge and Corruption." That was "balanced" by one Ted Cruz sound bite.

On the "CBS Evening News," reporter Scott MacFarlane featured Democrat Sens. Dick Durbin, Peter Welch and Sheldon Whitehouse (who pushed hard on the Epstein matter). This was "balanced" by Republican Sen. John Kennedy asking a different set of Epstein questions.

Several of these stories at least mentioned that Biden's Justice Department was exposed for analyzing the phone records of eight Republican senators in their partisan investigation of Trump's 2020 election denial. Several also floated the unproven claims that border czar Tom Homan accepted a bribe when he was a private citizen.

The newspaper reporters couldn't avoid snarky editorializing. The front-page Washington Post story, headlined "Combative Bondi Is Pressed On Her Record," featured reporter Jeremy Roebuck describing the attorney general "lashing out" at Democrats, responding "with personalized, non sequitur attacks."

The New York Times put the Bondi hearing on page A-11 under the headline "By Attacking, Bondi Avoids Hard Queries About Agency." Reporters Glenn Thrush and Devlin Barrett described Bondi's approach to Democrats as "simple and brutal: Don't answer, just attack." As if the Democrat questions weren't attacks?

The Times duo insisted Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have testified in an unprecedented fashion, "characterized by a contemptuous refusal to even cursorily address inconvenient questions and the use of prepared attacks against Democrats to change the subject and drown out criticism."

Could they be any more obvious in sounding like press aides to the Democratic minority?

It's flabbergasting that these networks and papers always find the Democrats and their talking points to be the most important thing that the public must absorb, even after they lose elections. Boldly resisting their arguments is dismissed as too personal, too nonsensical and too diversionary. Everyone can see the "news" is rigged against Republicans.

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Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.