Bill Barr’s Gaslighting New Memoir Won’t Make Us Forget He’s A POS

That ship has sailed, Bill.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr’s rehabilitation tour has begun! Barr attempts to scrub Donald Trump’s stench off himself in his new book, One Damn Thing After Another, which is a fair description of Trump’s administration. The damn thing is 600 self-serving pages.

Barr argues that Trump could’ve won the 2020 election if he'd “just exercised a modicum of self-restraint, moderating even a little of his pettiness.” This is the “Ballad of the Establishment Republican”: If only Trump had become another person, he could’ve defeated Joe Biden.

PREVIOUSLY: Brave Bill Barr Brags To The Atlantic About Doing Bare Minimum To Stop Trump Coup 

However, Barr doesn’t mince words: "The election was not ‘stolen.’ Trump lost it.” Tell us something we don’t already know because we aren’t crazy.

Barr suggests sensible conservatives, if there are such, move on from Trump and embrace "an impressive array of younger candidates” who share Trump’s views but not his “erratic personal behavior.” He doesn’t offer any specific names for this new generation of conservative young guns. Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Anthony Gonzalez fully supported Trump’s non-coup-related agenda, but that wasn’t good enough.

Barr is just one of many senior Trump administration officials and journalists cashing out with books about the former president. I assume we’ll eventually hear from former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, once the servants have sharpened all her crayons. One Damn Thing After Another drop March 8, and will probably attempt to whitewash Barr’s own awful tenure as attorney general, during which he served more as Trump’s defense counsel than the people’s attorney. (Vice President Kamala Harris once dismissively referred to Barr as “Trump’s boy” in a moment of unfiltered awesomeness.) He undermined the Robert Mueller investigation and dropped the criminal case against Russian patsy Michael Flynn. Wonkette once called Barr a "fascist, racist asshole” when he refused to acknowledge documented evidence of systemic racism in law enforcement.

Obviously, much of Barr’s memoir is devoted to smearing the political left, which he claims was “radicalized” during President Barack Obama’s second term. He compares support for social justice issues to “the same kind of revolutionary and totalitarian ideas that propelled the French Revolution, the Communists of the Russian Revolution and the fascists of 20th-century Europe.” We’re literally just asking that the police don’t murder Black people in the streets.

PREVIOUSLY:  Bill Barr: Come For The Fascism, Stay For The Unhinged White Supremacist Bullsh*t! 

We do agree with Barr that the prospect of another Trump presidential run is “dismaying.” He writes a less than flattering LinkedIn testimonial for his former boss:

Donald Trump has shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed.

Donald Trump never possessed those traits. It’s not as if he just cracked after Biden whooped his ass in the Electoral College and popular vote. He was always a buffoonish oaf and wannabe despot. Certain conservatives like Barr, who enabled Trump at every turn while he was in office, want to make the Big Lie and January 6 their offramp, and while we’re glad they’re at least taking the exit instead of driving further down the coup expressway like most of the GOP, they can’t pretend as if Trump’s fundamental unfitness is brand new information. 

Barr isn’t merely rehabbing his own reputation but the GOP establishment that believed it could control Trump like he was a common George W. Bush. He tries to downplay Trump’s “menacing mannerisms” of a strongman ruler as just showman “schtick,” and claims that Trump only “lost his grip” after the election. This ignores how Trump’s unhinged behavior and lawless demands sent Miles Taylor,   Olivia Troye, and Elizabeth Neumann screaming from the White House.

“He stopped listening to his advisers, became manic and unreasonable, and was off the rails,” Mr. Barr writes. “He surrounded himself with sycophants, including many whack jobs from outside the government, who fed him a steady diet of comforting but unsupported conspiracy theories.”

However, Barr was present while Trump and his stooges tried to overturn a free and fair election. Barr bolted from a coup in progress rather than publicly opposing it like someone who was once the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Barr’s a coward who doesn’t deserve our respect or a hefty book advance.

[ Wall Street Journal / New York Times ]

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