Former Attorney General Bill Barr’s post-Trump rehabilitation tour hit a slight speed bump this week, as he became the latest in a long and deeply pathetic line of conservative figures to publicly bash the former president as a seditionist maniac — only to then admit that, sure, he’d vote for Donald Trump again if it comes down to it.
Speaking with Today anchor Savannah Guthrie on Monday, Barr — currently shilling for his soon-to-be-released memoir One Damn Thing After Another (already marked down from $35 to $28 even before it’s been published) — reiterated his distress at Trump’s post-election behavior, saying Trump “went off the rails” and was in the thrall of “a little coterie of sycophants who were telling him what he wanted to hear.”
This, you might think, would mean Barr is through with the man he previously said “cared only about one thing: himself.” Wrong! Because no matter how bad it was for Trump to foment a literal insurrection against the government, at least he wasn’t (gasp! shudder!) a progressive!
“Because I believe 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 explained to Guthrie, after noting that he’d support someone else besides Trump, if he runs, in the GOP presidential primaries.
“So even if he lied about the election and threatened democracy, as you write in your book — better than a Democrat?” Guthrie asked.
“It’s hard to project what the facts are going to 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 said again, leaving little room for misinterpretation: If, as all signs indicate, Trump were to run and secure the GOP nomination in 2024, William Barr will trot into the voting booth and say “yes, America, this is the man who should be president once again!”
To make Barr’s committed spinelessness all the more pathetic, it came on the heels of a letter sent to NBC News by Trump, calling his former chief enabler “slow, lethargic,” and someone who was broken “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,” Trump added, in one of those rare moments where his particular brand of self-absorbed venom is actually surprisingly on point.
Barr now joins the likes of Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio in the ignominious ranks of people who have expressly shit-talked Donald Trump as a grotesque affront to American politics ... and then pledged their support for his candidacy anyway. Great work everyone!
