Trump slams former AG Bill Barr over upcoming memoir

Matt McClain/The Washington Post via AP, Pool

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Former U.S. attorney general Bill Barr revealed in his upcoming book he still intends to vote for Donald Trump should he choose to run for office in 2024. 

In Barr’s memoir, “One Damn Thing After Another,” Barr revealed the extent of his rivalry with the former U.S. president, describing Trump as a “bull in a bull ring,” and telling him that “someone going to come and put a sword through your head.”  

The book, which comes out on Tuesday, details the extent of Barr’s thoughts on the former commander-in-chief. In the book and in interviews leading up to its publication, Barr says that he doesn’t believe Trump should run for office in 2024.  

Despite his reservations about Trump, Barr says that he’ll still vote for him if he becomes the Republican nominee.  

“Because I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic party, it’s inconceivable to me that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee,” Barr said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” with Lester Holt.  

Throughout the book, Barr describes the disagreements he had with Trump, and the tactics used by senior aides including then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo to corral Trump’s often erratic impulses. 

“At one point, I said to [Trump]: ‘You know, Mr. President, you’re like a bull in a bull ring and your adversaries have your number. They know how to get under your skin, and all they have to do is wave a red flag over here and you go charging and attack it,’” said Barr in an interview with NPR.  

“And I said, ‘At the end of the day, you’re going to be in the middle of the ring sweating and someone’s going to come and put a sword through your head,” Barr continued. “He didn’t think much of that metaphor.” 

While Barr remains a staunch conservative who won’t let his personal feelings about the former president get in the way of future support for Trump, Trump himself remains angry at Barr’s refusal to do everything he wanted when he was in charge. 

In a letter to NBC’s Holt, Trump slammed the former AG.  

“Bill Barr cares more about the corrupt Washington media and elite than serving the American people,” Trump wrote. “He was slow, lethargic, and I realized early on that he never had what it takes to make a great attorney general. When the radical left Democrats threatened to hold him in contempt and even worse, impeach him, he became virtually worthless for law and order and election integrity. They broke him just like a trainer breaks a horse.” 

“I would imagine that if the book is anything like him, it will be long, slow and very boring,” suggested Trump.  

Despite Trump’s evaluation of the book (which he hasn’t yet read, and presumably has no plans on doing anytime soon), reviewers were more favourable to the former attorney general.  

Washington Post book reviewer Devlin Barrett described Barr as “easily [Trump’s] most effective and important cabinet member,” and that the memoir showed he could “tell a good yarn and has a penchant for deadpan punchlines.”  

The WaPo reviewer described the book as a “defence of his tenure to fellow conservatives.”