Bill Barr Has Absolutely No Filter When Discussing His Time With Donald Trump
Never one to concede the last word, Donald Trump unleashed a three-page tirade on former Attorney General Bill Barr on March 2. After NBC News' Lester Holt interviewed Barr in anticipation of his new memoir, "One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General," Trump directed a letter to Holt, listing all of Barr's flaws. "Bill Barr was a big disappointment to me as Attorney General, he was afraid to act, and usually didn't," Trump wrote in part. "I would imagine that if the book is anything like him, it will be long, slow, and very boring." Burn!
Barr responded, telling TODAY's Savannah Guthrie in a March 7 interview that Trump's petulant behavior fit a pattern, saying (via Insider), "It's par for the course. The president is a man who, when he's told something he doesn't want to hear, he immediately throws a tantrum and attacks the person personally."
Unsurprisingly, Trump and Barr share quite a storied past. Barr resigned from his Attorney General post in December 2020 and, following the Capitol riots in January 2021, took Trump to task for the violent occurrences that day. "Orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable," Barr said in a statement the following day, per the New York Post. "The President's conduct yesterday was a betrayal of his office and supporters." Continuing this passionate back-and-forth, Barr has also opened up on what it was really like spending time with Trump behind-the-scenes.
Bill Barr claims Donald Trump's 'pettiness' cost him
When it comes to Donald Trump, Bill Barr speaks plainly. In a March 11 CNN interview, Barr said that while he backed Trump's policies, "I was very conscious of his personal failings, especially his pettiness and his temper when he's not getting his way." Barr shared an anecdote from his new memoir, "One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General," which recalled Trump's "tantrum" during the turmoil following George Floyd's death in 2020. Per Barr, Trump blamed his aides for the violent riots that took place, labeling them "f***ing losers."
But those outbursts were nothing compared to post-election Trump, Barr claimed. Accusing the ex-president of going "off the rails," the former attorney general claimed to CNN that Trump only surrounded himself with people who supported his stolen election claims. "Well, he's not my idea of a president," Barr added in the interview. "I felt that he was going to lose the election because he was not controlling himself, he was allowing his pettiness to come through."
Despite his Trump misgivings, Barr told TODAY's Savannah Guthrie on March 7 that he would still vote for Trump should the former POTUS secure 2024's Republican presidential nomination. "It's hard to project what the facts are going to turn out to be three years hence," Barr said, via the New York Post. "But as of now, it's hard for me to conceive that I wouldn't vote for the Republican nominee."