The details are still emerging following President Trump’s firing of Pam Bondi. But even with the dust still settling, payback and retribution are on the menu. Within the last few hours, photos and reports have started going viral which seem to show some of that payback with bucket loads of poetic irony. To which the DOJ swiftly responded with charges of fake news. I’m talking about Pam Bondi’s official DOJ portrait dropped unceremoniously into a waste basket — we just call them trash cans down here in Texas — after she received her proverbial pink slip from the President. Multiple outlets are running with the story — all based on this single photo offered up without a named source. That’s code for… UNVERIFIED and UNCONFIRMED, and that part will become important in a moment. TMZ wasn’t the first to run with it, but they had a whopping 1.2 million views as of the time of this report with their version of the story: Pam Bondi's portrait was tossed in the trash at the Department of Justice after Trump firing https://t.co/6wOrRC9iJM pic.twitter.com/7qF6Ziz95l — TMZ (@TMZ) April 3, 2026 The initial dustup came from MS Now (formerly MSNBC). MS Now’s Ken Dilanian shared the photo on X, which simultaneously grew legs as a full-fledged story as a result: https://t.co/JTDhqwkXXi pic.twitter.com/NmtVlxFRuT — Ken Dilanian (@KDilanianMSNOW) April 3, 2026 Let me be clear, (yes, I heard Obama’s voice in my head when I wrote that — it’s seared in, and I can’t help it)… There is no confirmation on whether or not that really is Bondi’s official DOJ portrait in the trash can. But the media, excited at the chance of hitting back at the Trump Administration for what they perceive as past injustices, have smelled blood in the water. Now, everyone’s running with the story which purports to show how quickly the tables can turn. Dilanian, who co-wrote MSNOW’s subsequent article, argues that it just shows how much anger there was towards Pam Bondi in the completely bipartisan and a-political Department of Justice. (Yep… dripping with sarcasm there.) That’s according to this coverage of the already infamous Bondi portrait flap, as reported by Huffpost: There doesn’t seem to be a lot of love at the Department of Justice for recently ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi. Shortly after President Donald Trump announced Bondi’s removal from the AG job, images started circulating on social media showing her official DOJ portrait being quickly removed from its previous spot next to photos of the president and Vice President JD Vance, MS NOW reported. One photo that is going viral shows the portrait of Bondi unceremoniously dumped in a trash can. MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian, who co-wrote the article with Carol Leonnig, appeared on the network Friday and said the trashed pic signals how many DOJ employees feel about Bondi. “Look, there’s a lot of anger, especially among the career workforce, about Pam Bondi and what she did to change the Justice Department, more so than any attorney general in modern history,” Dilanian said. He said DOJ employees’ main issue with Bondi is that she incorrectly assumed that the career workforce at DOJ is more sympathetic to Democrats than Republicans. In response, the DOJ posted a side-by-side. On the left… Ken Dilanian’s post is labeled “FAKE NEWS”. And on the right… what the DOJ says is the truth: Fake News vs. Real News pic.twitter.com/rMBJ9cGf5T — DOJ Rapid Response (@DOJRR47) April 3, 2026   Again, let me be clear. I don’t have a clue whether that initial photo was staged or AI-generated to capitalize on Bondi’s ouster, or whether it was real. But I do find it telling that in a world DOMINATED by AI-generated deep fakes… We still often find ourselves at the mercy of a photograph, EITHER of which could be easily faked. I don’t know about you, but that still makes me really nervous. You might have realized by now why the issue of Bondi’s portrait in a trash can is even a thing. If you’ll recall, the DOJ was super slow in changing out the previous Administration’s portraits following President Trump’s swearing in last year. Bondi, at the time, captured the hearts of many… by handling the issue herself — as was reported at the time by Fox News: Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday personally stripped the Justice Department’s walls of portraits of former President Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and her own predecessor, former Attorney General Merrick Garland, saying it was “ridiculous” for the portraits to still be hanging nearly three weeks into President Donald Trump’s tenure. Bondi’s role in personally removing the portraits, first shared on X by the New York Post’s Miranda Devine, was confirmed to Fox News Digital by a Justice Department official. Bondi “saw portraits of Garland, Biden, Harris were still up, and she took the initiative to take them off the walls herself and stack them in the corner,” the official told Fox News. The actions come after Bondi, who was sworn in earlier this month, vowed during her confirmation hearing in January not to politicize the Justice Department. Bondi, a longtime state prosecutor in Florida and two-time state attorney general, used her roughly five-hour confirmation hearing last month to vow that, if confirmed, the “partisanship, the weaponization” at the Justice Department “will be gone.” Here’s the social media post quoted in that article which broke that story back in February of 2025: Attorney General @PamBondi went into the DOJ in DC today and noticed that on the walls in one wing they still have big framed photos of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Merrick Garland. This is “ridiculous” three weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency. So she took down the photos… — Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) February 12, 2025 Here’s the full text of that historic post for context and convenience: Attorney General @PamBondi went into the DOJ in DC today and noticed that on the walls in one wing they still have big framed photos of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Merrick Garland. This is “ridiculous” three weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency. So she took down the photos off the wall, there and then, on her own, and stacked them in a corner where we hope they will never be seen again. Bravo! It is admittedly a weird world. We have the anti-Trump establishment legacy media (name changes notwithstanding, MSN-Whatever)… Along with a large portion of the pro-Trump base… Both simultaneously excited, for vastly different reasons, that a key Trump Administration official has been removed. And many in BOTH CAMPS are having a laugh at Bondi’s expense right now over that photo — of HER photo — in the trash! If that doesn’t reveal the complexities of DC politics, I don’t know what does! I still don’t know whether or not it was all staged to begin with for social media clicks. But I definitely know what happens when you make promises to an entire voter base and fail to keep those promises. File 13. In many ways, it doesn’t matter whether that photo is real, or AI-generated. It’s one thing for the Democratic Party to hate you and openly mock you; that’s expected. But once you are seen to be the face of empty promises, it’s only a matter of time before your photo ends up in the trash. What’s your take?