There’s no love lost between Donald Trump and his former attorney general, with Trump criticizing Bill Barr on everything from his comments on Trump’s latest indictment to his weight.
In a Sunday afternoon interview, his first since he was indicted for allegedly hoarding classified documents, Trump was asked by former adviser Roger Stone whether the timing between the indictment and House Republicans’ quest to link President Joe Biden and Burisma was coincidental.
Trump, for some reason, used the question as a springboard to attack Barr for labeling the indictment “very, very damning.”
“He was gutless,” Trump said during a fawning interview on Stone’s new radio show. “He wouldn’t do what you’re supposed to do. But everybody says this is a disgraceful indictment. It shouldn’t happen.”
He went in further after Stone asked whether Barr was part of the supposed “deep state,” a conservative conspiracy theory of government officials working to undermine Trump.
“I think he’s a coward who didn’t do his job,” Trump said. “He was desperately afraid of being impeached. You remember when the Democrats were saying we’re going to impeach Bill Barr. There was no reason to impeach him. But they were going to impeach Bill Barr and he was petrified of being impeached. I said, ‘I got impeached twice and my poll numbers went up.’ Not so bad. But you know, he was a coward and unfortunately we have to live with it.”
He continued barraging Barr with insults: “I think he’s more weak than anything else. And now he goes and he sits down and—if they can find a chair for him, because it’s not that easy—and he sits down and he just bloviates and it’s disgraceful. He’s so it’s actually unpatriotic. It’s so bad for our country. Just so bad, but yet he’s got a lot of hatred. I fired him for just not doing his job.” (Barr previously said he was fired for telling Trump his election fraud claims were “bullshit.”)
Barr appeared on Fox News on Sunday, where he laid out his view of what Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment meant for his former boss.
“I think the counts under the Espionage Act, that he willfully retained those documents, are solid counts,” Barr said. “I do think we have to wait and see what the defense says, and what proves to be true, but I do think that … if even half of it is true, then he’s toast. I mean, it’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning.”
