The Embarrassing Behavior Pam Bondi Has Reportedly Displayed With Many Reporters

The taxpaying public is in no shortage of awkward Pam Bondi moments to cringe through, but she's apparently much more uncomfortable in private. We know the U.S. Attorney General built her career in Florida by projecting the image of an amiable prosecutor, the kind who can connect with jurors and win elections. It turns out that, long before Bondi's transformation into a screaming embarrassment on Capitol Hill, she had an unusual tactic for dealing with difficult situations, and it reportedly involved calling them up to, well, cry.

According to The Atlantic, reporters who covered Bondi during her early political career noticed a rather peculiar pattern whenever they wanted to run a story on her campaigns. Journalist Patrick Manteiga recalled an instance when he phoned Bondi before publishing a story about her campaign. She got on the line, and believe it or not, began sobbing and pleading with Manteiga not to publish it. Manteiga was obviously perturbed, so he allegedly called a friend at the St. Petersburg Times to relay the incident, and the friend's response was basically: "Yeah, she does that to us too."

A third reporter then confirmed the same thing, and that's when it was understood that this wasn't a one-off emotional episode. It was a strategy. This hasn't been the only time Bondi has turned on the waterworks, either, with The Atlantic reporting that she'd often bring out the tears when people questioned her anti-LGBTQ+ agenda as Florida's attorney general, with Bondi allegedly saying, "You know me. I love gay people. You know my heart." Then, of course, there was the time Bondi wept over a dog.

One of the stranger Pam Bondi stories we've heard over the years involves not her longstanding relationship with Donald Trump or her numerous legal and political battles, but the infamous Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Gather ye for the story of Master Tank, a Saint Bernard who became a pawn in a bewildering legal dispute between Bondi and victims of the hurricane.

After the storm tore through Louisiana, the chaos separated thousands of animals from their owners. One of these was Master Tank, who eventually ended up in a Pinellas County shelter. Bondi, who had recently lost her own Saint Bernard, adopted him and gave him a new name. All's well that ends well, right? Well, it turns out Master Tank's real owners tracked him down, but they were not met with empathy and reason. Bondi alleged that Master Tank had been neglected and refused to give him back to the real owners, Steve and Dorreen Couture and their four-year-old grandson, who was, at the time, grieving the deaths of his parents.

The two reached a settlement before trial, and Master Tank was returned to the Coutures. Bondi wept publicly at the handover, promising to stay in the dog's life forever. "She was going to take care of him for the rest of his life and supply him with food and medicine," Dorreen Couture told the Tampa Bay Times. "She did for the first few months. After that, she was supposed to have her first visitation that September and she canceled." Bondi's waterworks, it turns out, have an expiration date, and they usually come with terms and conditions, if these reports are to be believed.