How MAGA’s 'revolving door' is making a failed Trump official rich: analysis

Dan Bongino at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida on July 16, 2023 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has picked many former Fox News hosts for key positions — from Jeanine Pirro (now a federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia for the U.S. Department of Justice) to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Another is Dan Bongino, who is back at Fox News and resumed his podcast after leaving his position as deputy FBI director.

In a February 10 column, MS NOW's Steve Benen describes a "revolving door" linking Trump officials and right-wing media. And he stresses that although Bongino was an "embarrassment" at the FBI, that didn't stop Fox News from rehiring him.

"The precise number of former Fox hosts, anchors and contributors who have joined Donald Trump's team is open to debate," Benen explains, "but by any fair count, the total is roughly two dozen. One of the notable things about revolving doors, however, is that they can be used to go in both directions: As a wide variety of figures leave Fox to join Team Trump, some members of Team Trump have also left the administration to join Fox…. Bongino's tenure at the FBI was an embarrassment. The president thought it might be interesting to put a volatile podcast personality in charge of running the bureau, and the result was a failed experiment in amateurism: Bongino did a job he didn't like badly."

Benen points out that Bongino "is in a unique position."

"While the revolving door has spun quickly since Trump returned to the White House," the "Rachel Maddow Show" producer observes, "Bongino is one of those rare people who went from conservative media to the administration and then back to conservative media — all within the span of about 10 months."

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