On Sunday, the new United States Attorney General, Todd Blanche, went into a figurative lion's den, that being NBC News' Meet the Press, where he faced host Kirsten Welker. And, the AG Blanche handled himself pretty well, including dropping a few metaphorical truth bombs on Welker when she questioned the new AG about the possibility of President Trump giving him illegal or unethical orders.
Watch:
Here's that key portion of the interview:KRISTEN WELKER: We appreciate you being here in person. As we just heard in your address to the Justice Department staff this week, you said you and the DOJ will, quote, “uphold the law without fear or favor.” You of course used to be President Trump’s former personal defense attorney. Can you pledge that the Justice Department will always act independently of the White House?
ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Well, there’s a big difference between saying we will always do our job and investigate any case and act independently of the White House. No, I’m not going to pledge that. And no attorney general should ever pledge that. The President, I mean, if I were to pledge I will be independent of the White House, what that means is that if President Trump says, “I want the Department of Justice to go after every violent criminal in this country,” which is what he has said, what you’re saying to me is I should say, “No, sir, I’m not going to do it.” So I will act with integrity. Our prosecutors will act with integrity. We will prosecute without fear or any sort of favor. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing. And that’s what every Department of Justice should do.
Hint for Kristen Welker: The Attorney General works for the president. That's not a realistic expectation. But what she seemed to be hinting at, she came right out and said in the very next exchange:
KRISTEN WELKER: Well, I guess, big picture: If the president asks you to do something that you feel crosses an ethical or legal line, would you do it?
ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: The president will never ask me to do something unethical or legal — or illegal. He never has. He never will. And no, I swore to the constitution of the United States like every cabinet secretary has done and like every attorney general before me has done. And so this, this narrative that’s mostly pushed by the left and pushed by the media that the president’s going to pull me aside and ask me to do something illegal is completely a false narrative, not true, will not happen, and hasn’t happened.
Now, it looks to the casual observer a lot like Kirsten Welker was going for a "gotcha" here, but if she was, she missed the target. Her question is based on the premise that President Trump may very well present the Attorney General with an illegal or unethical order. AG Blanche slammed the door on that line of reasoning.
It's to the AG's credit that he engaged in this at all. One might wonder why, knowing that the questioning is apt to be a minefield of "gotcha" attempts, but that's how it is. And here's the thing: Messaging is a big part of politics. Any administration, any politician, Republican or Democrat, has to engage with the media, like it or not. That is, unless the politician is Joe Biden in 2020.
And, also like it or not, a lot of people still watch the legacy media and rely on them for news. Comparing two Sunday shows, NBC's Meet the Press and Fox News' Fox News Sunday, the averages for June of 2026 were 905,000 for Fox vs. 2.859 million viewers for NBC. That's almost three times the viewership. So, any Trump administration official is going to have to engage with these people, like it or not.
Fortunately, the new Attorney General would appear to be up to the task.
You can see the entire interview here.
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