The post-Donald Trump Presidency career trajectory for many of the former POTUS’s closest collaborators (and sometime-conspirators) has followed one of three paths: becoming a talking head for Fox News, write a tell-all book, or both. While there have been enough “insider” books written about the Trump years to clog every White House toilet, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t keen insights to glean from a lot of them. And to hear former attorney general Bill Barr tell it in his upcoming memoir about the time he spent working under both Trump and George H.W. Bush before him, Trump was his own worst enemy.
The New York Times got an early look at Barr’s upcoming tell-all, crankily titled the One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General. In it, the former AG paints Trump like the impetuous, tantrum-prone toddler he was often described and depicted as, writing that Trump’s “self-indulgence and lack of self-control” are what led to him losing the 2020 presidential election.
In some ways, Barr’s book—and its timing—seem to serve as a giant, hard-covered warning call to Republicans that Trump is not the future of the Republican party—nor should he be viewed that way (despite the fact that he just won the CPAC straw poll). Barr describes the whole notion of Trump running for office again in 2024 as “dismaying,” and begs his fellow Republicans who are leaning that way to reconsider.
“Donald Trump has shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed,” Barr writes.
Trump and Barr seemed to be pretty tight, right up until Trump lost the 2020 election but refused to concede the fact. It’s at that point, according to Barr, that Trump “stopped listening to his advisers, became manic and unreasonable, and was off the rails. He surrounded himself with sycophants, including many whack jobs from outside the government, who fed him a steady diet of comforting but unsupported conspiracy theories.”
It’s worth noting, maybe just because it’s fun to type, that at the same time Barr started backing away from outgoing president, Trump labeled Barr a “swamp creature.” Because he has the best words!
Barr also claims that Trump’s decision to push The Big Lie and “the absurd lengths to which he took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill.”
One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General will be released on March 8, 2022.
(Via The New York Times)