History was being made in Washington. And once again, you had the perfect seat.

You had the same vantage point savvy news photographers all chose on Wednesday. It was the same spot news camera pros also chose when they snapped another nearly identical historic news photo in the last century: seven guys – top execs of America’s tobacco companies – standing side-by-side at a 1994 House hearing, with their right hands raised. They were swearing to tell the truth. Then they testified that nicotine isn’t addictive.

Fast forward to last Wednesday: In the House Judiciary Committee hearing room, news photographers, live TV cameras, you and I, all had the identical vantage point. We could see U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, sitting stone-faced at the witness table. Behind her, a number of women stood side-by-side in the audience – all with their right hands raised. They weren’t talking at all. Yet the testimony they gave in silence was the most compelling of anything we heard as we watched on our TV, computer and smartphone screens.

Democratic members of the House had asked the women, mostly in early middle age and surviving victims who, as very young teens, were lured long ago by billionaire Jeffrey Epstein to entertain and service his rich and powerful friends at his Caribbean island. On this day, House Democratic representatives had asked all those Epstein sex abuse survivors to stand and raise their hands if they had tried to get Bondi’s Justice Department officials to agree to listen to them present evidence of crimes Epstein’s rich and powerful friends had committed by pressuring these then-underage girls to perform sexual acts with them. All the women who were standing raised their hands (signaling yes). Then they were asked how many never heard back from Bondi’s Justice Department. Again, all raised their hands.

In her prepared testimony, Bondi had said she was “deeply sorry for what any victim has been through” and that “any accusation of criminal wrongdoing will be taken seriously and investigated.” But when Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., asked Bondi to turn around, face these victims who now call themselves “survivors,” and apologize to them face to face, President Donald Trump’s attorney general remained expressionless and unmoving.

Finally, Bondi spoke: “I’m not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics.”

At this point we need to remind each other that the participants in this hearing were addressing different audiences. The Democrats – and the women who are Epstein sex crime survivors – were speaking to an audience of millions of American voters. (That included not just Democrats and Independents, but also the many Trump-voting Republicans who for years had been demanding the release of all Epstein case documents. They had insisted Democrats must have something to hide.)

Bondi, by contrast, was speaking to an audience of one – her boss, Trump. As his polls have been dropping, promises were being rescinded and reversed. And as you surely have noticed, when bad things happen, Trump’s fallback is his compulsion for sandbox combat and name-calling. Bondi long ago became a master in playing Trump’s game Trump’s way.

So she came to the hearing armed with a huge looseleaf binder filled with negative research on each Democrat who would question her. Every time a Democrat pressed her to give simple yes-or-no responses or provide specific numbers or details, she would instead flip open her negative book and counterattack.

So when lead Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., pressed Bondi to be responsive to the questions, Trump’s attorney general’s response was hardly nuanced: “You don’t tell me anything, you washed up loser-lawyer.” You know she was speaking our president’s lingo.

Bondi reached for her negative research binder when Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., pressed the attorney general about the relationship that various Trump officials had with Epstein over the years – especially Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was Epstein’s next-mansion neighbor on New York’s swank East Side.

Bondi replied to Balint: “With this antisemitic culture, right now, she voted against a resolution condemning – his Jewish ….” At which point Balint erupted: “OH! OH! Do you want to go there? Are you serious? You are talking about antisemitism to a woman who lost a grandfather in the Holocaust! Really? Really?” Balint got up and left.

And so it goes. This has been a week where lots went very wrong for Trump – especially when he tried to autocratically abuse his presidential powers. In an exceedingly rare move, a federal grand jury refused the effort by Trump’s Justice Department to indict six Democratic lawmakers who had been valiant veterans and made a video reminding troops they had the right and constitutional duty to refuse any order they thought was illegal. Their comments in a video essentially said the same things Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had also said before he got his present job.

Then the Internal Revenue Service improperly shared personal tax data info of immigrants with the Department of Homeland Security. And all flights to El Paso, Texas, were hurriedly canceled when DHS improperly deployed a laser-based counter-drone weapon without taking the required security safeguards. Trump recently said the ICE and Border Patrol forces in Minneapolis weren’t going to be drawn down; on Thursday, they were totally withdrawn. And enough House Republicans just joined Democrats to halt Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Canada.

As Jimmy Breslin’s book title once asked about the woeful first-year New York Mets: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

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