Big Business Has Pam Bondi Fire Trump's Antitrust Chief

Today, Attorney General Pam Bondi fired antitrust chief Gail Slater, who was considered a hawkish enforcer skeptical of big tech. Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, had come to dislike and distrust Slater, for a variety of reasons. She had ruffled feathers of corporate allies, been slow to achieve much, and had played her internal politics poorly.

But there’s another reason she was ousted. Corruption. For months now, Bondi and Blanche have been overruling Slater’s decisions, both big and small, often at the behest of a corporate lobbyist and MAGA influencer named Mike Davis, one of whose clients is Ticketmaster/Live Nation.

And indeed, Live Nation’s stock jumped on the news, on the expectation that the antitrust case seeking to break up the company, slated for trial next month, may be settled or dropped.

It’s been an ugly fall from grace for Slater, who worked as an advisor to J.D. Vance in the Senate and was considered a flag-bearer for the populists on the right. It’s also instructive, because it reflects the final victory of corporate power and the Epstein class within the Trump coalition.

We’ll start with the Slater’s appointment to the job. She came in with great promise, appointed and confirmed in March of 2025, which is very early for an antitrust chief. 78 Senators voted for her, an unusually strong bipartisan endorsement for a Trump appointee. And Trump liked her personally. “Big Tech has run wild for years,” Trump said in announcing the pick, “stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!”

Slater had a business coalition behind her, some sympathy from progressives, the trust of the Senate, and the President and Vice President. And she was at first walking tall, snapping necks and cashing checks. She inherited the Google adtech case after the arguments were done, and the Judge ruled for the government. Her Division recommended to courts that they be skeptical of of the use of algorithms to collude on price.

And Wall Street noticed. Here’s Jim Cramer, expressing fear after she was nominated.

But there was a certain arrogance to Slater, and her counterpart at the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson. Despite having accomplished