First U.S. Atty. for the Central District of California Bill Essayli speaks during a news conference at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 12.
(Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images)
By
Gustavo ArellanoColumnist
FollowJan. 26, 2026
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President Trump has an army of bootlickers that seems to stretch to the sunset. Many of them creep around on social media and almost certainly legions of them come from bot accounts on X.
Then there’s Bill Essayli. When it comes to saying anything to please a president with autocratic dreams, the former Assembly member is a bootlicking All-Star.
Att. Gen. Pam Bondi appointed him as the top prosecutor for the Central District of California in April with the explicit mandate to do Donald J. Trump’s will. His record so far has been unsurprisingly embarrassing and outlandish.
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An exodus of prosecutors who didn’t care for his staff screaming sessions and boorish press conferences. A felony conviction against a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy for excessive force that he reduced to a misdemeanor and then unsuccessfully tried to have dismissed. Seeking charges against people who dared protest Trump’s deportation deluge that his office eventually reduced, dropped or lost in court due to lack of evidence despite Essayli publicly boasting they were slam-dunk cases.
Judge rules Trump’s top federal prosecutor in L.A. is ‘unlawfully serving’A federal judge issued a split decision in response to a challenge over how the Trump administration installed acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, declining to dismiss indictments he has overseen but finding that he was not lawfully appointed.
Oct. 29, 2025
The guy can’t even call himself acting U.S. attorney anymore after a judge ruled in October he was “not lawfully serving” in the position since he was never formally appointed in the first place. So you’d think Essayli would hear the music and go back to being an inconsequential California legislator, but no! If there’s one thing Trumpworld has shown, it’s that once you’ve knelt to offer the Dear Leader a lick-and-shine, you better keep it up until your tongue’s as dry as Death Valley.
Which leads us to this weekend. And Essayli’s bootlicking-gone-wrong.
On Saturday morning, Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti after they gang-tackled him. He had tried to help a woman shoved to the ground by a federal immigration officer; an officer maced him and he soon collapsed — and shortly after, was dead. A Department of Homeland Security social media post justified what happened by saying Pretti seemed intent on “want[ing] to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement” because he was in possession of a legally registered handgun. He never brandished it though. In fact, multiple videos showed Pretti clearly holding what looked like a phone as agents swarmed him.
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Even though the incident was thousands of miles away from Los Angeles, Essayli had to flick his tongue — it’s the bootlicker way, after all.
“If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you,” he snickered on social media hours after Pretti died. “Don’t do it!” He also reshared the posts of right-wing social media influencers Jack Posobiec and Andy Ngo who claimed Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital, was following “antifa” tactics.
Essayli was soon getting smacked around on social media by gun rights groups, including the NRA, which has endorsed Trump in all his presidential races.
A sign is raised in support of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at a candlelight vigil during a peaceful protest at the federal building in Los Angeles on Saturday.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
It blasted his rant as “dangerous and wrong” on social media, adding that “responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”
The Gun Owners of America, a group that’s even more conservative than the NRA, called Essayli’s comments “untoward,” leading to the first assistant U.S. attorney — because bootlickers love their titles — to whine about the nonprofit “adding words to mischaracterize my statement” even though they directly quoted him.
When history looks back at all the cowards, sycophants, apologists, enablers, henchmen and other miscreants that made Trump possible, the bootlickers will have a starring role. The “I voted for this” tribe — even when this is cruelty and actions that are more those of a Macbeth than an American president.
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The bootlicker is a universally reviled archetype. Their bread-and-butter is comforting the most comfortable by afflicting the most afflicted. They try to top fellow bootlickers with even more obsequious acts of flattery, hellbent on making the most damning line of Orwell’s “1984” come to life: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
The bootlicker’s moral compass is malleable. Wherever the Big Boss has moved the goal posts, that’s where he or she will kick the ball. If all goes to hell and America devolves into a rank dictatorship, beware the bootlicker.
The Trump regime currently has a lineup of them that’s like the bootlicking version of the 1927 Yankees.
Gun rights groups fiercely criticize top L.A. federal prosecutor for response to Minneapolis shootingTop Los Angeles federal prosecutor Bill Essayli, who has doggedly supported Trump’s agenda, faced blistering criticism from gun rights groups, including the NRA.
Jan. 24, 2026
In addition to Essayli, you have Stephen Miller, who kept calling Pretti an “assassin” and “domestic terrorist” on social media as if repeating the slurs would make them true. Vice President JD Vance, who described Renee Good, a woman shot and killed on Jan. 7 by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis after she tried to drive away from him, as a “deranged leftist.”
Repeating what the big bootlickers say is a character trait. Call it the bootlicking trickle-down-effect.
There’s Border Patrol chief at large Gregory Bovino, a migra man a federal judge accused of “outright lying” during depositions over the actions of his team in Chicago this fall. During a news conference about the death of Pretti, Bovino claimed that the victim looked like he “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement” — the exact same language used in the original Department of Homeland Security social media post on the killing. Hours later, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also impersonated a macaw, parroting Miller by accusing Pretti of “domestic terrorism.”
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On Fox News on Sunday, FBI Director Kash Patel — the agency that in ye olden days would be leading an impartial investigation into what happened to Good, Pretti and other victims of la migra — told host Maria Bartiromo that “No one who wants to be peaceful shows up at a protest with a firearm. That led a skeptical-looking Bartiromo, who’s about as liberal as the Spanish Inquisition, to ask, “And how was he using that handgun in terms of threatening Border Patrol?”
A wide-eyed Patel could only say he trusted Noem’s version of the events.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a news conference on Saturday to address an incident where federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti during operations in Minneapolis.
(Al Drago / Getty Images)
These are just some of the most prominent, powerful bootlickers stumbling right now on their own deceit and desperation.
Space prohibits me from quoting all the Republicans who last week were stalwart 2nd Amendment fans now saying Pretti had no right to carry his legally registered firearm to a protest even though they cheered on Kyle Rittenhouse when the Wisconsin teen showed up at one very openly carrying an AR-15, which he ended up using to fatally shoot two people who tried to assault him. There’s no evidence Pretti ever handled his firearm during the protest, let alone threatened federal agents with it.
Then there’s the bootlickers who cheered on the Jan. 6 rioters for rising up against what they saw as government tyranny, who insist the dozens of law enforcement officers injured that day were just deep-state agents. Today, those bootlickers are telling folks pushing back against Trump’s police state to respect it.
Obey or die.
The Roman philosopher Plutarch described flatterers in his immortal essay on the subject as “the plague in kings’ chambers, and the ruin of their kingdoms” that “prey upon a noble quarry.” So to Essayli, Patel, Noem and all the other bootlickers in Trump’s orbit, and to the relatively anonymous legions beyond, I’ll leave you with the warning that I saw in a meme that I’m sure Plutarch would endorse:
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No matter how hard you lick it, the boot will never love you.
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Videos of deadly Minneapolis shooting contradict government statementsJan. 25, 2026
Trump’s playbook falters in crisis response to Minneapolis shootingJan. 25, 2026
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The author contends that Bill Essayli exemplifies the “bootlickers” who enable Trump’s agenda through uncritical loyalty rather than independent judgment. The piece argues that Essayli’s prosecutorial record demonstrates this allegiance: he reduced a felony conviction against a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy to a misdemeanor and subsequently sought to have it dismissed, while charges against Trump deportation protesters were dropped or resulted in court losses due to insufficient evidence despite his public confidence in their strength[1]. The article asserts that Essayli’s comments following the Minneapolis shooting—stating “there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you” if someone approaches law enforcement with a gun—were particularly egregious given that the victim was a lawful gun owner whose videos showed him holding what appeared to be a phone[2]. The author emphasizes that even traditionally conservative gun rights organizations, including the NRA, condemned these statements as “dangerous and wrong,” representing a rejection that transcends typical partisan divides[2]. Fundamentally, the piece characterizes Trump’s administration as populated by enablers of autocratic governance who suppress dissent and abandon institutional independence in service to presidential will.
Different views on the topic
Essayli has defended his position by clarifying that the controversial Minneapolis statement addressed those “aggressively approaching law enforcement while armed” rather than lawful concealed carriers, asserting: “If they reasonably perceive a threat and you fail to immediately disarm, they are legally permitted to use deadly force”[2]. The Department of Homeland Security’s initial post-incident statement characterized the situation differently, suggesting the victim “seemed intent on wanting to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement” based on his possession of a registered firearm[2]. Essayli’s official biography emphasizes his prior prosecutorial accomplishments, including handling the response to the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack and securing a conviction in a significant opioid prescription case[3]. Additionally, the Trump administration has framed its appointment of prosecutors like Essayli as necessary to enforce federal law and advance immigration enforcement priorities, with Essayli’s office subsequently pursuing the president’s agenda in Southern California[1].