Whoops.
During an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier that aired on Monday night, Attorney General Bill Barr defended the federal police’s aggressive tactics against peaceful protesters near the White House on Monday June 1, the day of Trump’s infamous photo-op.
The attorney general claimed the administration was “reacting to three days of extremely violent demonstrations right across from the White House.”
“Things were so bad that the Secret Service recommended the President go down to the bunker [on Sunday],” Barr told Baier.
Except that’s the exact opposite of what Trump claimed after reports of his nearly hour-long retreat to the bunker, aka the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, emerged.
Insisting that “nobody ever came close to giving us a problem” during the violent protests outside the White House on Sunday, Trump told Fox News radio host Brian Kilmeade last Wednesday that his visit to the bunker “was much more for an inspection.”
The President denied reports that the Secret Service had told him he needed to go to the bunker due to safety concerns.
“Nope, they didn’t tell me that at all,” Trump said. “But they said it would be a good time to go down, take a look because maybe sometime you’re going to need it.”
Watch Barr below:
Barr contradicts Trump’s claim that Secret Service only wanted POTUS to go to the bunker for inspection. pic.twitter.com/ysHH9rOkkA
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) June 9, 2020
