Pam Bondi and the Courage to Turn Toward

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Content Warning: This episode and transcript mention child sexual abuse and the Jeffrey Epstein case. Please listen with care.

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Episode Transcript

Hi there, my name is Cameron Conaway. Welcome to 3-Minute Reframe.

For new subscribers, 3MR is where I share perspectives that have helped me live with more clarity and courage. Sometimes these insights arise from ancient texts or the classrooms where I teach—and sometimes, like today, they arise from the House Judiciary Committee hearing on February 11, 2026, involving, you guessed it, Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The event, really, was a tragedy. Bondi sat just a few feet away from survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. Throughout the hearing, she was given multiple opportunities to simply turn around, to look these survivors in the eye, and to acknowledge their existence. She refused. If she needed to speak to a staffer behind her, she would lean her entire body back awkwardly rather than turn toward the survivors.

One survivor, Danielle Bensky, later said, “Just the sheer acknowledgement that we were human would have been enough, and she couldn’t even do that.” Another, Teresa Helm, noted that by turning her back on those in the room, Bondi was turning her back on survivors everywhere.

As a survivor of child sexual abuse myself, I watched this pathetic performance of Trump loyalty with a mix of burning anger and deep curiosity. The anger was especially fueled by the disgusting way in which a corrupt administration showed who it cares for most. In the latest tranche of Epstein files, we all saw the names of some of the world’s wealthiest people redacted while the names of some survivors—who literally asked that their names not be mentioned—were published for all to see. But as my anger burned, so did my curiosity. I kept wondering: Why couldn’t she turn around?

It’s easy, and perhaps warranted, to look at Bondi and conclude she is simply soulless. If you need some validation on that belief, just head over to the comment section of most videos of her performance at the hearing. Now, I can’t independently verify whether or not she has a soul, but I can say that her public display of cowardice caused me to think about my own cowardice. To think about a hard truth: that I know what it’s like to lack the courage to face something.

Maybe it’s a bad habit we can’t kick, or the deep roots of that habit. Maybe it’s the hard conversation we need to have with ourselves or others, but can’t. Maybe it’s even having the courage to face a past behavior we aren’t proud of so we can forgive ourselves for it and try to move on. As Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, reminds us: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

So here’s the reframe

The next time you find yourself pointing a righteous finger, as I did with Pam Bondi, pause to see if the seed—or some small part of what you are pointing at—also lives in you. If you find that it doesn’t, might that be an opportunity to face something new?

The goal isn’t to let public figures off the hook for their failures. And it’s not to run around finding terrible qualities in others just to see if we have them so we can feel worse about ourselves. It’s to ensure that we see ourselves fully, that the finger-pointing doesn’t become a distraction from our own growth. In his poem Please Call Me By My True Names, Thich Nhat Hanh writes about being both the sea pirate and the twelve-year-old girl abused by that pirate. It’s a suggestion that by seeing the fuller picture of ourselves—the parts we loathe, the parts we love, and the worlds in between—we can be more conscious about which parts of ourselves to nurture.

When it feels safe, give this a shot. If something in today’s 3MR resonated, I hope you’ll consider forwarding it to someone who may benefit. You’ll hear from me next week.

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Show Notes

• Bensky quote
• Helm quote
• Bryan Stevenson of Equal Justice Initiative
• Please Call Me By My True Names by Thich Nhat Hanh

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