""Bill Barr would still vote for Donald Trump for president," Peter Wehner writes. "It raises the question: Just what would Trump need to do in order for Barr not to vote for him?
"One need not be a progressive to be troubled by Barr’s stance. Indeed, one can believe, as Barr does and as I do, that the left poses threats to our country. If Barr can’t vote for a Democrat in good conscience, the obvious alternative would be to write in some other name on his ballot. But for Barr, that’s not enough. He has come to view the Democratic Party as so depraved, so malicious, so malevolent, and so close to a total victory that would shatter America that he would vote for a man he clearly considers psychologically unhinged, reckless, dangerous, and living in a delusional world. In fact, it’s inconceivable to Barr that he wouldn’t vote for such a man," Wehner continues."
Bill Barr Embraces the Darkness
After everything the former attorney general has seen and heard, he says he’ll still vote for Trump.Peter WehnerEven Bill Barr, Donald Trump’s former attorney general and votary, has turned on the former president.
In his new book, One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, Barr wrote that Trump was responsible for the violent assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, an effort whose intent was to overturn the presidential election.
“I do think he was responsible in the broad sense of that word, in that it appears that part of the plan was to send this group up to the Hill,” Barr told NBC’s Lester Holt. “I think the whole idea was to intimidate Congress. And I think that that was wrong.”
After the election, Trump became “manic and unreasonable”; he “was off the rails” and “lost his grip,” according to Barr. He added, “The absurd lengths to which he took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill.” Barr refers to Trump’s “erratic personal behavior” and recounts a meeting after the election, on December 1, when Trump berated Barr for not embracing his conspiracy theories that the election was rigged.
“I told him that all this stuff was bullshit about election fraud,” Barr told Holt. “And, you know, it was wrong to be shoveling it out the way his team was. And he started asking me about different theories. And I had the answers. I was able to tell him, ‘This is wrong because of this.’”
In his book, Barr describes Trump’s reaction this way: “This is killing me—killing me. This is pulling the rug right out from under me.” The former president, referring to himself in the third person, added, “You must hate Trump. You would only do this if you hate Trump.”
Barr, seeing that Trump was enraged, tendered his resignation. According to Barr, Trump pounded the desk and said, “Accepted!”
“And then boom! He slapped it again,” Barr told Holt. To make sure that nothing had been lost in the translation, Trump once again said, “Accepted! Leave, and don’t go back to your office. You are done right now. Go home!”
Barr’s account is notable in part because he often acted more like Trump’s defense attorney than the attorney general. Among the disquieting things he did was ...
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