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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Pushback!

Pushback!

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Donald Trump tweeted that he thought that the sentence proposed by the prosecution for Roger Stone (7-9 years, taken from the guidelines) was too harsh. And within a few hours, Attorney General William Barr was ON IT!

This rang alarm bells for all those who feel that the process of justice does not emanate from the President through the Attorney General, including a great many lawyers who have worked in the Department of Justice. The four prosecutors in Stone’s case resigned.

Today, ABC’s Pierre Thomas interviewed Barr, who told Trump to back off.

Or maybe the message was “I can’t do this if you keep saying the quiet part out loud.”

Here’s the bit that ABC has released so far.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi called Trump’s intervention an abuse of power.

Also,

Things are probably pretty tense inside the Justice Department, part of why Barr is saying those things.

Will be interesting to see how the Tweeter-In-Chief responds.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

97Comments

  1. 1.

    Jeffro

    I’m impressed – much of Democratic Twitter seems to understand that this is just Barr running cover for trumpov and/or trying not to get himself impeached.  There’s no disagreement here.  trumpov has already weighed in saying he’s not mad with Barr at all for his statements in this interview.

    ie, just more Barr lying in the service of the World’s Worst Human Being

  3. 3.

    Cameron

    It’s impossible for him to do his job?  He’s not doing his job anyway.  What’s the difference?

  6. 6.

    MJS

    @Cheryl Rofer: It will be interesting to see how long before Trump contradicts this sentiment. It may not be via tweet- it could be on his next walk to the helicopter, but the contradiction is coming.

  7. 7.

    jl

    @Jeffro: “just more Barr lying”

    OK, that is unfair. Barr isn’t exactly outright lying, just not making entirely crystal clear what he means by ‘doing his job’.

    If doing his job was what he was actually supposed to be doing for his job, Trump’s tweets would be far less problematic. He could just make clear he was ignoring them, and all other improper attempts at interference, and most importantly, act accordingly.

    Hope the Democrats keep hammering the fact that Barr is not acting accordingly.

    I wonder if the Trump-Barr dog and pony show will be of interest to the moderators at the next debate. If not, the candidates should talk about it anyway.

  8. 8.

    Jeffro

    @Cheryl Rofer: Yup.  Like I said, this is all very well planned out and rehearsed.

    Some House subpoenas directing Barr to appear well before March would seem to be in order…

  10. 10.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Cheryl Rofer: I’m glad people are recognizing this is just Barr lying.

    Barr says he can’t do his job if Trump keeps this up, but Barr is literally continuing to rig things for Trump as we speak. This whole thing was clearly Barr pretending to have some independence from Trump and Trump pretending that he’s okay with people saying ‘bad’ things about him.

    Glad to see no one is taking it seriously.

  12. 12.

    Jeffro

    @MJS: He won’t contradict it.  He’ll just repeat it, smiling, knowing that – per his internal prime directive – he’s getting one over on the Dems and no GOP Senator or Senators will call him out on it.

    “Oh sure, absolutely, I hear what AG Barr is saying, sure, and I respect him as a wonderful, independent, amazing Attorney General…”

  17. 17.

    randy khan

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    I can’t imagine why we would assume that Grisham’s comments reflect what Trump actually thinks about this.

    Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump actually is steaming and is one tweet away from firing Barr because he doesn’t actually understand what Barr is doing here.  (I won’t be surprised if he isn’t, either, but people definitely have been fired for less in this Administration.)

  18. 18.

    E.

    @JPL: Not unknown. Notice Barr was pretending to be vigorously defending his staff and their independence but had to admit he has not spoken with the four prosecutors who withdrew or left the Department.

  24. 24.

    Cheryl Rofer

  25. 25.

    Geminid

    @randy khan:  I think at this point Trump needs Barr. Like he needs Pompeo and Mnuchin. And I think his lizard brain knows it. Trump’s destructive, dangerous and scary, but I think his position is precarious and he knows it.

  31. 31.

    Mary G

    Barr and Twitler are playing good cop/bad cop on this. Having US attorneys quit is a feature, not a bug, because the more they push out the more they can replace with Federalist Society lackies who will happily prosecute the president’s enemies. If Barr does consent to testify to either Judiciary Committee, which I doubt he even will, he will lie his ass off about coordinating with the White House and Susie Collaborator Collins will furrow her brow and nothing else will happen. Nadler needs to paper the place with subpoenas and get the battle going in the courts.

  34. 34.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Barr seems to be able to think strategically, so I can see him realizing Roger Stone isn’t the hill he wants to die on.  I can also see Barr realizing the Muller report was far as he dare pushes it.

  37. 37.

    Dan B

    It’s good to see that Trump’s hungry id / ego is causing as much trouble for stealthy law / constitution burners like Barr.  Who will be next in trying to dial back the insatiable braying of Trump?  Mt bet used to be on Pompeo but that may be unlikely unless there’s a tweet from the all-too-white House declaring war on Iran.  Putin will probably call Donnie off Putin’s allies, the Mullahs.

    And I hope for a loud grassroots campaign to haul Barr in front of congress by next Tuesday.

  38. 38.

    Mary G

    @Bill Arnold: Everyone should read that piece. Barr and a couple of other guys bullied the writer in high school because he was Jewish and supported civil rights. It talks about the many horrible things Barr had done after that, including supporting the notorious  anti-abortionists Operation Rescue, because long hairs at Columbia had infringed upon his constitutional right to attend his college classes by protesting the Vietnam War. The chair of the Judiciary Committee, one Joe Biden, congratulated him on his “refreshing candor” and his first nomination to AG, for GWHB in 1991, passed out of committee unanimously approved by all members. The writer quite properly calls out the Democrats for that. Hopefully some enterprising reporter can find that Biden fellow and ask him WTF?

  40. 40.

    Dan B

    @Geminid:  The consensus on malignant narcissists is they will not stop.  Are the Jarvankas keeping him from lobbing bombs?  Is he still being sedated?

  44. 44.

    Gelfling 545

    Barr’s had 4 resignations & has Trump spilling the beans all over Twitter.  I’m wondering if he troubled to say anything at all because he’s concerned about outright revolt in the ranks.

  46. 46.

    Kent

    Obviously Trump could pick up the telephone in the Oval Office, get Barr on the line, and tell him EXACTLY what he wants done in private.  He is the PRESIDENT after all.

    So why instead does he tweet away in public like he is still some outsider to the government that he actually runs?

    Because Barr isn’t the intended audience of those tweets.  All the other lower level folks up and down the Justice Department who might be working on the next indictment, and all the folks in the FBI working on maybe the next investigation.  THEY are the audience.  Trumps repetition is setting a tone for everyone else to follow.

  47. 47.

    Frankensteinbeck

    To everyone who thinks this is just a show:  On Barr’s side, sure, but Trump is not this strategic, as he has proven a thousand times, and he HATES to be contradicted or maligned in any way in TV.  This is the Insecure asshole who has regular meetings where his staff has to tell him how great he is.  He is also the asshole whose staff regularly issue professional sounding denials of Trump’s latest tantrum before we even find out about it.

    Trump is mad.  Whether he can get over it is another matter.  Barr has been so over-the-top loyal Trump can maybe let this one go.

  48. 48.

    bemused

    Barr very annoyed trump is shouting and blabbing their plots. Good luck with that Barr.

    I just read a local letter to editor who used that old excuse for hating people who get government aid which is taking away from the letter writer. I’m having a brain glitch for a term for that belief and it’s not “one man’s gain is another man’s loss”.

  52. 52.

    Kent

    @Gelfling 545:Barr’s had 4 resignations & has Trump spilling the beans all over Twitter.  I’m wondering if he troubled to say anything at all because he’s concerned about outright revolt in the ranks.

    They don’t care about the resignations.  That’s a bonus because they will have a whole bunch of Regent University evangelical wack jobs waiting in the wings to fill those spots.  If they were Trump loyalists they wouldn’t have resigned.  Saves the trouble of purging them like Bush’s folks did.

  53. 53.

    ziggy

    @Dan B: I think it’s a combination of sedating medication, keeping him busy reviewing supportive media, preparing re-tweets, doing his own make-up and hair, and taking phone calls from suck-ups. That would be a full time job. Oh and flushing 15 times after every dump.

  57. 57.

    WaterGirl

    @FelonyGovt: I was about to post a comment suggesting that this thread be called The Pushback Dance, since it was clearly choreographed.

    After reading your comment, I think that this should be the title instead:

    Pushback Puppet Theatre

  61. 61.

    WaterGirl

    @Cheryl Rofer: I had to check to make sure I had read the whole thing to the bottom, and I had done that, at least.

    I suppose I figured that Nancy Pelosi’s statement would be ignored, and then in my outrage at everything about this and everything else this week, I forgot about the statement by the Chief U.S. District Judge!

  63. 63.

    debbie

    Will there be pushback against Trump’s proposed executive order requiring that federal buildings be built in the neoclassical style only?

    The architectural world is reeling over President Trump’s call for traditional designs for new Federal buildings. His proposed executive order is called “Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again,” it takes an out-with-the-new, in-with-the-old approach to architecture, calling modern federal buildings constructed over the last five decades “undistinguished,” “uninspiring” and “just plain ugly.”

    Sounds to me like he’s hoping for his own Reichstag.

  66. 66.

    WaterGirl

    I am pretty pissed right now at people like Preet and Chuck Rosenberg and all the people who assured us that Barr was a professional who would understand and respect the office of Attorney General.

    I know Preet said it and I think that Chuck Rosenberg did as well, thought I am not as certain.

    It’s the same thing again, just like with Kavanaugh – once you reach a certain status everybody vouches for everyone else, even if they don’t actually know the person is good.

    edit: I say this as someone who really likes Preet and Chuck Rosenberg.  But dammit, they have failed us on some of this.

  67. 67.

    Kent

    @debbie: And that’s probably the least-bad executive action he’s taken this month.  When you weigh it against other actions like opening up Bear’s Ears National Monument to oil drilling and politicizing science in the EPA.

  69. 69.

    Kent

    @Just Chuck: They don’t even care about that.  It will just make their case that they were partisan Democrats who were U N F A I R to Trump and needed to go anyway.

  70. 70.

    Geminid

    I always figured that the CIA must have opened a file on Trump no later than his 1985 trip to Moscow, and it’s probably fairly thick by now. NSA maybe also. Can anyone with more perspective comment?

  71. 71.

    bemused

    @WaterGirl:

    I’ve actually heard Rosenberg say on msnbc twice that he was dead wrong about Barr.

    I just don’t get how Rosenberg and others didn’t get Barr’s number until he started working at the WH.

  72. 72.

    WaterGirl

    @bemused: I am shaking my head.  Literally.  I just don’t get it, either.  He was a slime during the Clinton impeachment stuff.  Seems to me he has been a slime for a very very long time, and I want this kind of fucking blindness to stop.

  74. 74.

    Geminid

    @Dan B:. Yeah, he’s a narcissist, but I think he must have some sort of lizard brain survival instinct. He’s a career criminal who’s skated close to the edge for decades and not gone over.

  75. 75.

    Shalimar

    Nancy Pelosi is only half-right.  Even if Trump didn’t intervene, it is still an abuse of power.  Barr has known Stone since the 1980s.  Attorneys General do not intervene in low level DoJ prosecutions to help their friends.

  78. 78.

    Shalimar

    @WaterGirl: I heard Rosenberg vouch for Barr on MSNBC during the confirmation hearings, so you are correct about him too.  He has since apologized and said he got it completely wrong, but I really wanted to hear Melber push him further and ask him how he could  have fucked that  up given everything in Barr’s past.

  79. 79.

    Another Scott

    (Haven’t read the other comments yet.)

    If it’s impossible for him to do the job, then he should resign – rather than running to ABC to give an interview.

    We know President Crimey isn’t going to stop Tweeting, so…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  80. 80.

    jl

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Madness.

    Madness is the natural endpoint of this kind of personal authoritarianism

    If they want to eat themselves, that is good, IMHO.

    John Adams, crusty old second president, wrote about this. He said the next stage is that they all try to be the biggest most abject and slavish cheerleader and attack each other for lack of enthusiasm, and for any implication (real or manufactured) of disloyalty and deviationism.

  82. 82.

    jl

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Yes, in some ways Bloomberg is very good.

    But in other ways, he and his team need some work. A few tweets below is a brag about 600,000 voter ‘interactions’ whatever that means.

    Maybe they need the data processing people out of the communications messaging team?

  83. 83.

    Bill Arnold

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:
    I don’t watch Fox/Lou Dobbs. Is he always like this? In that segment he’s utterly detached from any reality but the utterly detached wingnut Trump-cultist reality. E.g. the “American people” supported, according to polling, impeachment and removal of DJT. Unless Lou Dobbs believes that those Americans are not really Americans, he’s factually incorrect.

  84. 84.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Barr criticized the champion of white supremacy and suggested that there are limits beyond which it is unacceptable to cheat.  The modern conservative movement is based on seething resentment at putting up with those sins.

    Assholes demand to be praised for being assholes.  Barr defied Cleek’s Law.  He did not Own the Libs.

  85. 85.

    WaterGirl

    @Shalimar:

    but I really wanted to hear Melber push him further and ask him how he could  have fucked that  up given everything in Barr’s past.

    I would love to see that question posed, and hear the answer.

  86. 86.

    WaterGirl

    @jl: Being good at tweeting, especially if you have a record that’s not good, and you are not truly a Democrat, does not a good Democratic president make.

  87. 87.

    Mandalay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Cute, but I’m not at all convinced that Bloomberg necessarily writes his tweets.

    Of course if he gave interviews we could see just how sharp and witty Bloomberg is, but he’s too busy for that.

  90. 90.

    Another Scott

    @debbie: GovExec:

    […]

    The order encompasses all federal courthouses and agency headquarters, all federal public buildings in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area – what’s called the National Capital Region – and all federal public buildings that cost more than US$50 million to build. The order would apply to the design of all new buildings, as well as to all renovations or additions to existing buildings.

    It’s meant to overturn the existing “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture” issued in 1962 by future Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Rather than dictating a single style, Moynihan’s principles emphasize the importance of diverse “designs that embody the finest contemporary American architectural thought.”

    In fact, they specifically suggest that “development of an official style must be avoided. Design must flow from the architectural profession to the government” – which is exactly the opposite of what Trump’s mandate is trying to do.

    So who’s behind the executive order?

    It was drafted by the National Civic Art Society, a conservative nonprofit that promotes the classical tradition in architecture, urbanism and the arts. The group considers modernist architecture to be “a failure” and endeavors to “help architecture return to its pre-Modernist roots.” The National Civic Art Society claims all forms of modern architecture “reject traditional standards of beauty and harmony. Indeed, ‘beauty’ is a forbidden word,” and notes that some leading modernist architects were fascists, racists and evinced a “hatred of democracy.”

    ‘Classical’ can mean many different things

    Many U.S. government buildings – from the White House to the Supreme Court Building – were built in the classical style. According to the executive order, because the style alludes to the architecture of “democratic Athens and republican Rome,” it is able to “physically symbolize” the nation’s self-governing ideals. On the other hand, the order and the NCAS characterize buildings built since 1962 as “undistinguished… uninspiring … and even just plain ugly,” citing popular opinion polls as proof.

    And yet, critics have been quick to point out that the classical style doesn’t always symbolize democratic ideals of self-governance.

    Dictators, plutocrats and autocrats have long used the classical style to connect the grandeur of the Roman empire to their own power. Hitler, Stalin and Kim Jong-Il all favored classically inspired buildings.

    In the United States, there’s a strong classical tradition in not just the capital but also in the South, where plantation owners were keen to build their mansions in the neoclassical style – and where this architectural tradition is still alive and well. For example, we see it in buildings like the recently completed Federal Building and Courthouse in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Yet it’s difficult to avoid the fact that many of these neoclassical estates – these purported symbols of democracy – featured separate quarters for slaves.

    […]

    Be Best!!

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  91. 91.

    James E Powell

    @WaterGirl:

    He was a slime during the Clinton impeachment stuff.

    Being a Republican slime during the Clinton administration was a great career move for people like Comey, Kavanaugh, and more that I don’t wish to name because it makes me sick to do so.

  92. 92.

    jonas

    Of course when Barr complains he “can’t do his job,” because of Trump’s tweets, he means “subvert justice to serve Trump’s personal interests without attracting undue Congressional and media scrutiny.”

    Trump keeps saying the quiet parts out loud and it’s cramping Barr’s style.

  93. 93.

    jonas

    @Geminid: John Schindler claims there’s an entire room of compact shelving in a secret sub-basement of the Hoover building dedicated to Trump, but then again virtually nothing Schindler has claimed about Trump and the IC has panned out. If there is a bunch of shit on Trump, they seem perfectly content to sit on it.

  94. 94.

    Ella in New Mexico

    Well, well, well. Looks like Lou Dobbs is jockeying with Hannity to become Trumps biggest Official Ass Licker.

    Andrew Lawrence
    @ndrew_lawrence

    Lou Dobbs attacks Bill Barr, suggests he’s part of the “deep state,” calls the Justice Department “rancid, corrupt”
    https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1228111943954784256?s=20

    Wonder how this will turn out for Barr.  Multiple “Fake News is lying about what you heard Barr say in that video” Tweets and press releases forthcoming I’m assuming.

  96. 96.

    Ruckus

    @Cameron:

    He’s not doing the job we think he should be doing. He is trying to do the job that trump hired him to do, which trump has no right to do. But trump is even making doing the job he was hired for extremely difficult and that’s not the one he’s getting paid to do.

    Cheryl said it well.

    Or maybe the message was “I can’t do this if you keep saying the quiet part out loud.”

  97. 97.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Shalimar: Chuck Rosenberg may not like trump, and I respect his respect for institutions and the rule of law, but something tells me trump was the first Republican presidential candidate he didn’t vote for, at least it would not surprise me to find out that’s the case.

    ETA: My interpretation of the Barr interview: You reach trump by going on TV. This was Barr saying, I’ve got your back, I will do everything you want, including things you don’t know you want, because you are dumb and I am smart, but pipe the fuck down. I got this. Don’t make it harder for me to carry your water.

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