Former Attorney General Bill Barr on Sunday continued knocking former President Trump for pushing the Big Lie, while baselessly painting efforts to delegitimize the democratic process as something that happened on “both sides.”
During his appearance on MSNBC’s “Meet the Press,” Barr claimed that he saw “no sign” of Trump planning to stay in office if he lost the 2020 election, despite how Barr insisted publicly that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Pressed on multiple instances of Trump pushing election fraud falsehoods during the 2016 and 2020 presidential election seasons, Barr shied away from agreeing that the former president’s boosting of the Big Lie is a “pattern of practice.”
Instead, Barr, without evidence, attempted to accuse “both sides” of casting doubt on the election results in 2016.
“Well, I don’t know, there was sort of the same thing in 2016 on both sides,” Barr said. “I felt for a long time that he was going to lose the election.”
Barr said that in April 2020, he told Trump that he thought he was going to lose the election, arguing that the then-President’s “obnoxious behavior” was going to lead to his loss because it was already “turning off key blocks of voters.”
“On election night, I felt he was going to lose,” Barr said. “And I was actually surprised it was as close as it was.”
Barr went on to say that he believes Trump tends to surround himself with people who “tell him what he wants to hear.” The former attorney general likened interactions between Trump administration officials and the then-President to “wrestling an alligator.”
“After the election, he would just listen to this group of people who had no government position, but were telling him exactly what he wanted to hear, and he’s ultimately to blame for that,” Barr said. “There’s something about him that he, you know, wants to be surrounded by yes men.”
Barr’s comments follow Trump’s screed aimed at him last week after the former attorney general spoke with NBC News anchor Lester Holt for an interview.
In a scathing letter addressed to Holt, Trump slammed Barr as someone who caved to “the corrupt Washington Media and Elite” for refusing to play along with his election fraud falsehoods.
“He was slow, lethargic, and I realized early on that he never had what it takes to make a great Attorney General,” Trump wrote to Holt in the letter.
Watch Barr’s remarks below:
