Donald Trump has hit back at Bill Barr after the former attorney general predicted it would be “chaos” and a “horror show” if the Republican is re-elected as president.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump accused Barr of being a “weak & slovenly man” who didn’t want “anything having to do” with pushing the former president’s false claims that the 2020 Election was “rigged.”
Barr resigned as attorney general in December 2020 after Trump continued to falsely suggest the election he lost to Joe Biden was “stolen” due to widespread voter fraud, even after Barr publicly stated that the justice department had found no evidence to back up the claims.
Since then, Barr has become a frequent critic of Trump, including in his 2022 memoirs, One Damn Thing After Another.
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Appearing at a luncheon at the City Club in Cleveland, Ohio on Friday, Fox News’s Geraldo Rivera asked Barr if the man who is the favorite to clinch the GOP nomination in 2024 is “fit” to be president again.
“If you believe in his policies—what he’s advertising to be his policies—he’s the last person that could actually execute them and achieve them,” Barr said. “He does not have the discipline, he does not have the ability for strategic thinking or linear thinking, or setting priorities, or how to get things done in the system.
“It is a horror show when he’s left to his own devices. You may want his policies, but Trump will not deliver Trump policies. He will deliver chaos.”
In response, Trump attacked his one-time ally and the work he did as attorney general, and suggested he actually fired Barr from his position in late 2020.
“Bill Barr was a weak & slovenly man who was ill equipped to be Attorney General because he was literally in fear of the Radical Left Democrats & all they were threatening to do to him. He did fine with the Russia, Russia, Russia, Hoax, but it should have been gotten rid of, as a made up Democrat Con Job, much faster,” Trump wrote.
“Barr was most afraid of anything having to do with the Rigged Election, because he knew that it was this subject, more than any other, that the Democrats did not want to even think about.
“They got away with ‘murder,’ so no more discussions with the possibility of getting caught. They wanted it OVER! I got very tough with Bill Barr, and pushed him hard to do his job, but he just couldn’t overcome his fear of the Radical Left – He was useless. I ‘nicely’ fired him. He is now a soundbite!” Trump added.
In a one-word response to Barr’s remarks he made in Ohio, a Trump campaign spokesperson previously told Newsweek via email: “Who?”
This is not the first time that Barr and Trump have exchanged verbal blows.
In a March 2022 interview with NBC to promote his memoirs, Barr described how Trump “showed a detachment from reality” post-2020 election, including accepting a conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Machines were used to rig the ballots.
“He was willing to accept anything, no matter how fanciful, as long as it didn’t make him a loser in the election,” Barr said.
Barr added that Trump was the “maddest I’ve ever seen him” when he handed him his resignation letter over what then attorney general described as “bull****” election fraud claims.
In response, Trump said Barr “crumbled under the pressure, and bowed to the Radical Left” by not accepting the false election claims.
“Now he is groveling to the media, hoping to gain acceptance that he doesn’t deserve,” Trump said.
Trump also claimed that it is “incorrect and a total fabrication” that Barr handed in his resignation and that he was the one to ask for it.
“I never said ‘You must hate Trump,’ rather, I said ‘If you didn’t see corruption in the Election, of which so much has already been revealed (and massive amounts up until this date), then you are not capable of being Attorney General. You don’t have the energy or backbone to stand up to the Radical Left. Please give me your Letter of Resignation,'” Trump said.