It can't be "don't make me look like an idiot" because fail children or not, these guys are all in their forties
— your himbo boyfriend (@swolecialism) September 21, 2022
The serious grown-ups of the Permanent Republican Party have decided that TFG is now a liability for them. Bill Barr, Esq, takes leadership in the talk-show brigading, hoping to convince enough voters for his team to thimble-rig another electoral cycle with the argument that Trump was a singular, uniquely horrible exception to True GOP Decency — a human cancer that can be cut away cleanly without impugning the rest of the GOP body.
Barr has the experience. He has the gravitas. He has the amoral lack of conscience required to make this argument. But those useful traits have been seriously devalued since TFG rode down the golden escalator…
“Credit for moving the public discussion closer to reality is one thing, but no one should think that Barr is having second thoughts about the awful things he did in office” to advance an imperial presidency.https://t.co/IVYOR1K1dC
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) September 19, 2022
Author Donald Ayer “served as United States attorney and principal deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration and as deputy attorney general under George H. W. Bush.” As I said, the Permanent GOP is *not* happy with TFG’s semi-ex-spokesmen:
… Barr’s recent trashing of Trump in a manner likely to greatly impair his presidential prospects makes perfect sense when one understands the driving convictions and objectives that have guided him throughout his adult life.
Remember that Barr sought out the opportunity to serve as Trump’s attorney general by submitting a memorandum in June 2018, expanding upon his long-held, breathtaking vision that the Founders created an all-powerful president immune from virtually any limitation on his powers. Those views had occupied Barr’s mind since the 1980s. In the memo, Barr applied that vision to Trump’s then-current obsession, arguing that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was a wholly illegitimate intrusion on those powers…
The nature of those changes, and Barr’s determination to pursue them, were carefully spelled out in a major speech delivered to the Federalist Society on November 15, 2019, in which Barr argued that, contrary to “the grammar-school civics-class version” of the Founders’ government as one of checks and balances, the founding generation actually meant for the president to wield essentially unchecked authority.
Barr’s aggressiveness in defending Trump against those who would second-guess his actions is best known in connection with the lies he told about the Mueller report, while keeping the report itself under wraps so people could not see how inaccurate his statements were. His interventions in ongoing cases—including the criminal cases against Roger Stone and Michael Flynn—to substitute outcomes that were politically desirable for the president for those arrived at in routine course based on the facts and the law also drew widespread objections…
During 2020, Barr misused his official authority in many ways calculated to help Trump secure reelection. He sent law-enforcement officers to cities around the country to “suppress violent rioters and anarchists” who he said had “hijacked legitimate protests”—thus echoing Trump’s own calls for a crackdown. He oversaw the law-enforcement action to deny the right of peaceful protest in Lafayette Square so Trump could have a photo op at St. John’s Church. His department unsuccessfully attempted to enjoin the publication of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s book, which disclosed facts embarrassing to the president…
For all of Barr’s abuses of authority in an effort to keep Trump in office, it became clear to Barr by early December 2020, when zero evidence of serious fraud could be found, that Trump had run out his string. So Barr resigned. Since then, Trump has made things infinitely worse for himself, by engaging in a conspiracy to overturn the election by deception and violence, which culminated in the events of January 6, 2021. Were that not enough, the saga of the Mar-a-Lago documents reveals beyond doubt that Trump illegally retained, and apparently actively resisted returning, a very large number of highly classified documents, with who knows what grave consequences for national security.
As a result of these events, Barr has realized that Trump, far from being the indispensable person for the realization of his vision of an autocratic president, has become perhaps the greatest obstacle to its achievement. In a party where Barr’s bizarre ideal of an unfettered president holds tremendous sway, Trump can’t win in the general election, and if nominated he would likely take the banner of autocracy down with him. Barr feels the need to remove Trump from serious consideration so that another standard-bearer for that cause can pick up where Trump left off. Who knows? Perhaps Barr can come back for a third turn as attorney general to finish the job.
America is a republic, not a democracy monarchy! One is not supposed to discuss singular autocracy in front of the rubes voters — leave that to the quiet rooms where properly educated men of good background can discuss it amongst themselves, dammit!
Probably the worst minister of the Trump administration, once you really like pencil it all down? Easily the most cynical operator. Just a terrible, terrible person.
Why on earth he keeps popping up in profiles I'll never understand
— Lord Businessman (@BusinessmanLego) September 20, 2022
Well, Grima Wormtongue is always a favorite in what passes for the popular media…
Repubs in Disarray Open Thread: Bill Barr & the GOP’s ‘One Bad Apple’ ExcusePost + Comments (123)
