It Was All Bullshit

This past weekend, The Atlantic posted a story that examined the role of then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr in the weeks following the November 2020 election. 

Bill Barr has been described as one of Donald Trump's most aggressive loyalists and defenders.  

But in an interview with the Associated Press published  December 1, 2020, Barr said he saw no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. 

Which lead to this interaction between Trump and Barr.

Donald Trump:  "How the fuck could you do this to me? Why did you say it?"

Bill Barr:  "Because it's true." 

Donald Trump: "You must hate Trump! You must hate Trump!"

If all of this seems familiar, well, it is.  Like his predecessor Jeff Sessions, Bill Bar was loyal to Trump hundreds of times.  Like with Sessions, Barr only had to disappoint Trump once to earn his ire, his rage.  

And Li'l Donnie doesn't counter with "No, it isn't true!" No, he counters with casting Barr's position as a personal attack. 

And oddly phrased in the 3rd person? I think psychiatrists would have a field day parsing that sentence.  

In the Atlantic interview, Bill Barr had this to say:  "My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time. If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit."

Barr looked into Trump's allegations and found nothing to support any of the wild accusations Li'l Donnie was making.  

I don't want to give Bill Barr too much credit for his clarity and his dedication to facts and the truth. Barr took on the job as Attorney General as a partisan hack whose first job out of the gate was to recast Robert Mueller's investigation to a more favorable perspective on Trump that was not warranted. Too often, Bill Barr seemed to serve more as Trump's personal attorney than as the country's attorney general. 

Like Jeff Sessions before him, Bill Barr helped to create and support the man whose chaotic narcissism pushed him one step further than he was prepared to take. Bill Barr's last actions as Attorney General, standing firm to deny the lies of Donald Trump, may have been honorable but it's too little too late to reverse years of enabling Trump's worst tendencies.  

And 7 months after the election, this is still a point of concern, with Trump and his sniveling sycophants still pushing the narrative that the election was stolen. 

Bill Barr dug his own political grave with his subservience to Donald Trump. Throwing out one shovelful of truth doesn't mean Bill Barr doesn't have to lie in it.