The Power of the Dow Compels You

In yesterday’s hearing on the Epstein files, Pam Bondi treated congressional questions the way certain people treat speed limits: as a personal insult. The whole thing played less like testimony than a performance — staged for an audience of one — so brazen that nobody else on the planet could quite believe their eyes or ears, yet there it was, unfolding in real time.

Her defense was not a denial, not an explanation, and certainly not an answer. It was a number. The Dow Jones Index. And the “facts” she deployed had the same basic relationship to reality as her investigation: glossy, confident, and fundamentally fake.