Trump AG Todd Blanche had some sweaty, non-reassuring words for Americans as he played Karoline Leavitt

Karoline Leavitt is long gone but the show must go on — and Tuesday, in her place for the White House press conference, was the aggressively bland Todd Blanche. A painfully awkward man who currently serves as the United States Attorney General and formerly served as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Blanche spent most of his time at the podium talking about sweat.

Granted, it was a hot day, and reporters were gathered in the Rose Garden, which is no longer a garden but a paved-over collection of white stone slabs that reflect a lot of heat, but it was still a strange choice of topic. To begin with, Blanche reeled off a couple of “wins” surrounding Trump administration arrests and investigations, before opening for “questions, if there are any,” which of course there would be, because this is why everybody was here.

“I noticed you guys are sweating, which is nice,” he added, seemingly a joke, but let’s face it, also playing to his boss with the follow-up zinger: “I love to see that.” And so began a press conference of circular logic and non-answers and Blanche checking his watch. There were a couple of humorous faux pas along the way — “We are working together to prioritize unlawful voting in our elections,” was one of them — but mostly it was as expected for a lawyer.

For instance: on the latest Supreme Court ruling, which blocked Trump administration plans to screen and restrict mail-in ballots, and which Trump had railed against while personally insulting the judges involved, Blanche could only say that the president “has every right and indeed he should communicate his concerns with the Supreme Court when he has them” because “that’s what democracy’s about.”

I’m pretty sure I know what he was getting at here: that American democracy is based on three distinct branches of governance and that those branches not always agreeing with each other is part of the democratic process. But the idea that Trump should tell the Supreme Court when he disagrees with them seems a little more like overstepping or attempting to upset that democracy rather than support it.

Just to underline his point, Blanche added that Trump has the right to “communicate his frustration to the American people.” It’s a phrase that a lot of Trump loyalists have been using lately: that Trump “has a right” to do various things, as if the poor president of the United States is simply trying to say a couple short sentences and keeps getting cut off, as if he’s just never been heard in this family. As if the man in charge of everybody else’s rights is the real one in danger of having his rights violated. It’s a nice little destabilizing bit of doublespeak that’s presumably intended to confuse someone enough to stop them continuing their line of questioning.

Asked about possible government interference in the midterm elections, Blanche responded that “the federal government is always involved in elections,” which is of course deliberately obtuse. On AI and the possibility of extra regulation, he opined that “there’s a lot of criminal laws” already, so “if anyone associated with AI violates criminal law, we’ll prosecute it.”

“We’re not going to regulate AI,” he added, before extolling the technology’s virtues. He later added that if OpenAI, Anthropic and others want to “regulate themselves, then they should do that.” What was that about watching the watchmen? Don’t worry about it, babe!

Thomas Massie had just filed articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth for a complete mishandling of the Iran war, but Blanche had some reassuring words about that, too: “Secretary Hegseth is doing a phenomenal job,” and by the way, “he doesn’t just go off and do things. He follows the law.”

And anyway, the Iran war isn’t a war, which means you can’t have a problem with it, he added: “You call it a war. I disagree with that characterization.” That was an echo of what JD Vance said last week, when he also said he wouldn’t call it a war, which makes all that talk of “sending war fighters” over there very confusing indeed, but perhaps that’s just semantics.

Or perhaps, when a war has gone on long enough, it just stops being a war and starts to be background noise, and the service members putting their lives on the line are just imagining their lives to be in peril, and the skyrocketing oil and grocery prices are all in everybody else’s heads. Think positively and gas will go down to $2 a gallon!

Pressed about whether he’d have advised Trump to publicly insult Supreme Court justices when he was his client, Blanche said, “You can’t talk about my background and then ask me what I would've done… The real question is whether the president of the United States is allowed to be critical of another branch of government.” Of course, that wasn’t the real question. And Blanche seemed to know it, since he immediately wrapped up the question then turned back to the press and said, again: “Are you guys sweating yet? Nice. I love that.”

“No,” Blanche shot back immediately. “I’m very comfortable.” You can’t script these kinds of moments, truly taken from the original catalogue of absurdism.

Back to the ruling on mail-in ballots and whether Trump’s reaction should concern ordinary Americans, and Blanche responded simply that “I’m not sure that the American people follow this as closely as the people in this Rose Garden do” and, “Listen, ballots are confusing in every election.”

Asked about an FBI raid around alleged 2020 election fraud, Blanche simply talked circles about whether it could be defined as a “raid” or not. Asked about the Russian businessman who paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding festivities, he went even more lawyerly: “The president doesn't know who this person is… The president’s son says he’s a very close friend,” he said. “...When you say this guy is a friend of Putin, I don’t know who he is.”

He recovered from his obvious nerves around this question by pointing into the crowd then saying, without the confidence that would’ve made it funny, “I was gonna say [that I’ll next call on] the bald guy, but I’d probably get in trouble for that.”

About Trump’s anger over Christopher Wray and the FBI after the assassination attempt against him, Blanche wouldn’t back up anything the president recently claimed about the shooter being a Democrat. Instead, he said that Trump “was shot, he was a victim” and “as far as the president’s frustration with the FBI, I was there with him. I lived it.” The gist seemed to be: Donny’s emotional, and can you blame him? Cut him some slack, guys! Remember: the president has rights!

“I stayed 10 minutes longer than I was supposed to,” Blanche whined, as reporters continued to shout questions at him while he tried to wrap up the conference. Then: “I’m very sorry that you’re sweating. I’m not really sorry.”

The attorney general certainly did his level best (which isn’t an impressive best, but it is his best) to defend Donald Trump’s decisions and interests today. He did much less of a good job convincing anyone he was defending America’s interests. But maybe we’re asking too much of the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government.

After all, he has a right to see things his way. And he’s stayed 10 whole minutes longer than he wanted to, and there’s a lot of laws out there already, and the war that’s carrying on isn’t a war, so what do you expect him to say?