President Donald Trump said Thursday that Attorney General Todd Blanche will "go down as the best attorney general that this country's ever had," heaping praise on his Justice Department chief at a White House Rose Garden lunch for law enforcement and first responder leaders.
"Where's my Todd? Oh, what a job. He's going to go down. I mean, it's a little early. I don't want to jinx him, but I'm telling you, he's going to go down as the best attorney general that this country's ever had," Trump said.
Trump tied the praise to Blanche's work ethic and to the road they traveled together — Blanche was the president's private defense lawyer through his legal battles before entering government. "He works all day, all night," the president said, recalling those fights.
The president also used the moment to frame Blanche's mission. Wrongs from "the last four years" must be exposed, he said, "or we're not going to have a country." It was the clearest statement yet of the accountability agenda Blanche has carried into the Justice Department: a department Trump believes was turned against its own citizens, now being turned back toward them.
Trump did not stop with Blanche. At the same lunch, he praised Texas Senate nominee Ken Paxton, saying he "may have been the best attorney general in this country for many, many years" — a reminder that the president sees strong, loyal law enforcement leadership as the backbone of the country he is trying to rebuild.
The praise lands just months after Blanche's narrow 50-49 Senate confirmation this summer, which ended a long standoff over his nomination. He had been acting attorney general since Trump fired Pam Bondi in April, and every day of that fight was a test of whether the Senate would let the president have the Justice Department he was elected to build.
Then came the detail that gave the afternoon its edge. On the very day Trump was praising Blanche in the Rose Garden, nine fired FBI employees — who had worked on the classified documents case against Trump himself — sued Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel, calling their dismissals unlawful. The president's lunch was, in effect, his answer: the cleanup of the department continues, and he stands behind the men doing it.
For a president who has made restoring trust in federal law enforcement a centerpiece of his second term, the message was unmistakable. The man charged with that restoration is doing the job — and the president has no doubt where history will rank him.
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