How Jeanine Pirro Became Trump’s Most Loyal—and Rabid—Attack Dog

Pirro would seem an odd choice to replace a man best known for putting his foot in his mouth. Anyone who has glimpsed “Judge Jeanine” on Fox News over the last 15 years—or, for that matter, encountered Cecily Strong’s alcohol-fueled impression—knows that she’s also quite familiar with the taste of her own feet. Watching her on television was like being cornered by the groom’s wine-drunk aunt at a wedding. But she was nevertheless fully confirmed on August 3 in a party-line vote—with her ties to Fox News and her experience as a prosecutor seemingly playing equally pivotal roles for the Republicans who backed her nomination.

Since losing the “interim” tag she had held since May, Pirro has been a staunch backer of the president’s crackdown on D.C. Asked on August 13 to justify the presence of National Guard troops and mine-resistant military vehicles on the streets of D.C., given that violent crime is at a 30-year low in the District, Pirro launched into a lengthy soliloquy. “It’s never enough. This changed. This changed,” Pirro said, as she pointed to a series of photographs of D.C. crime victims. “It’s never enough. You tell these families, ‘Crime has dropped.’

“You tell the mother of the intern who was shot going out for McDonald’s near the Washington Convention Center, ‘Oh, crime is down,’” she continued, referring to a 21-year-old intern for a Kansas Republican who was killed as a bystander during a shooting earlier in the summer. “You tell the kid who was just beat the hell and back with a severe concussion and a broken nose, ‘Crime is down,’” Pirro added, referring to the assault of a Department of Government Efficiency employee known as “Big Balls” on the streets of D.C. “No, that falls on deaf ears, and my ears are deaf to that, and that’s why I fight the fight.”