Ex-White House official casts doubt on new rumors of Cabinet shakeup

President Donald Trump has been talking about swapping out Attorney General Pam Bondi due to his continuing frustration with her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, but a former White House official said that might be politically perilous in an election year.

The 79-year-old president has floated the possibility of replacing Bondi with Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, four sources told the New York Times, but Trump's former White House communications director Mike Dubke told "CNN This Morning" that he doubted the exchange would take place.

"So to answer your first question, though, what changed?" Dubke began. "Kristi Noem is no longer taking all the flack, to begin with, so Pam Bondi was second in line for the media and everyone else to come after. So I think that's part of it. I think your point is well taken. Pam Bondi has done for the president what Pete Sessions couldn't do in the first administration, and that's basically run an organization that is pursuing a lot of the efforts that the president wants her to pursue."

"I don't find the reporting on him questioning whether she should go or stay to be all that fascinating, because he does that all the time, and I don't think that's actually new," Dubke added. "Maybe it's ratcheted up a little bit, but this is, you know, from my experience, this is Trump being Trump."

Zeldin, the president's rumored favorite to take over the Department of Justice, served as a congressman from 2015 to 2023, but Dubke said he would not likely find an easy path through Senate confirmation if Trump followed through on replacing Bondi.

"[Noem] was easily replaced by a fellow senator, Markwayne Mullin, who was able to go through a confirmation hearing," Dubke said. "A confirmation hearing for DOJ is not going to be as smooth with Lee Zeldin, who doesn't have those relationships. So we've got to take the we got to look at the entire picture here and what is the art of the possible, and I'm not sure replacing Pam Bondi prior to the midterms is possible."

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