Former Attorney General Bill Barr this week escalated his criticism of Donald Trump , becoming the latest ally to publicly split with the former president.
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Former Attorney General Bill Barr this week escalated his criticism of Donald Trump, becoming the latest ally to publicly split with the former president. The former attorney general joins former Vice President Mike Pence and former Trump adviser Chris Christie as being among those close to Trump who have become more outspoken about their differences with the former president. But in a sign of Trump’s continuing grip on the party, Barr acknowledged he would still vote for his former boss in 2024. Barr in his new book chastises Trump for claiming the 2020 election was rigged, and he said in NBC interviews promoting the book with Lester Holt and Savannah Guthrie that the former president was broadly responsible for the riot at the Capitol on Jan.6,2021. “I certainly have made it clear, I don’t think he should be our nominee and I’m gonna support somebody else for the nomination,” Barr said on NBC’s “Today,” while calling a progressive Democratic agenda “the greatest threat to the country.” “It’s hard to project what the facts are gonna turn out to be three years hence, but as of now, it’s hard for me to conceive that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee,” Barr added. Republicans say that Barr’s acknowledgment that he would still vote for the former president is an indicator of Trump’s grip on the party’s elites. “What Bill Barr admitted this morning is very reflective about the majority of the Republican Party with voters, with GOP leadership, the GOP elites,” said Gunner Ramer, political director of the Republicans Accountability Project, which has been critical of Trump. “There’s one person in particular that I can think of that has their own lane and has said that they will not support Trump in 2024, and that’s Liz Cheney,” he added. On Monday, Axios published a three-page letter Trump sent to Holt, complaining about Barr’s responses during their interview and deriding his former Cabinet official as “slow” and “lethargic.” “He crumbled under the pressure, and bowed to the radical–and that is not acceptable,” Trump wrote. “Now he is groveling to the media, hoping to gain acceptance that he doesn’t deserve.” Barr responded by telling Guthrie Monday that « The president is a man who, when he is told something he doesn’t want to hear, he immediately throws a tantrum and attacks a person personally.
