What planet is he from?
I would have declared another Day Off since I’ve been on vacation this weekend, but this post about an interview that Bill Barr gave (and the interview itself) was so striking I thought it worthwhile to share it.
I’ve never been a fan of William Barr, except very briefly when in December 2020 he resigned his job as Attorney General under Donald Trump and later declared that the U.S. Justice Department had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election. Recently Barr said he would vote for Donald Trump in the November election regardless.
If you take the time to watch the interview with Bill Barr on which Schmidt is commenting below you will be struck by the number of times Barr declares “I don’t know” almost as though he were “taking the 5th.” Barr’s ultimate position is simply this: there is nothing Donald Trump has done or might succeed in doing during another term that dampen Mr. Barr’s devotion to “the Republican agenda.” The title of Schmidt’s post is entirely apt.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
Everything below is written by Steve Schmidt, former Republican strategist and founder of The Lincoln Project and now a prolific Substack writer.
You can’t fix stupid
STEVE SCHMIDT APR 28
I asked the person I love and respect most in the world a question after watching Kaitlan Collins interview Bill Barr on CNN. [To watch the whole 24 minute interview click here.]
I’ll be precise.
Me: “Is it ever okay to call someone stupid?”
Her: “No.”
Me: “I read a story about someone who picked up a rattlesnake and kissed it on the nose. The snake bit him in the face and killed him. Would you say he was stupid?”
Her: “He was stupid.”
During the interview, Collins referred to a claim by former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin that Barr was present when Trump said that a White House leaker should be executed. He responded by saying:
I remember him being very mad about that. I actually don’t remember him saying ‘executing,’ but I wouldn‘t dispute it, you know… The president would lose his temper and say things like that. I doubt he would’ve actually carried it out.
Barr then went on to say that people would sometimes take Trump too “literally:”
He would say things similar to that on occasions to blow off steam. But I wouldn’t take them literally every time he did it.
Before I call Bill Barr stupid officially, which I will, it is important to recognize the importance of Kaitlan Collins looking one of MAGA’s chieftain’s in the eye and saying:
Why not?
Barr’s response:
Because at the end of the day, it wouldn’t be carried out and you could talk sense into him.
Barr insisted that there was no threat.
I don‘t think the threat is there. The thing that I worry about President Trump is not that he’s going to become an autocrat and do those kinds of things.
Collins pressed Barr on why he doesn’t think that to be the case, and he said that it was just his “feeling:”
Having worked for him and seen him in action, I don’t think he would actually go and kill political rivals and things like that.
Let’s call that the “Collins Line,” which is something every journalist in America should probe and question MAGA candidates about. There are thoughts, desires, intentions and actions. Each is a step down a pathway that ends with death. There has never been political killing that hasn’t been prefaced by thoughts, desires and intentions.
I’ve written a great deal about this general principle:
Do we want democracy too?
STEVE SCHMIDT JULY 30, 2022
Treblinka: “Everything and nothing, all at once”
STEVE SCHMIDT APR 2
Majdanek cannot be denied
STEVE SCHMIDT APR 3
Auschwitz: what is its meaning?
STEVE SCHMIDT APR 6
Remembering Master Sergeant Roderick Edmonds
STEVE SCHMIDT DECEMBER 19, 2023
This moment must be slowed and understood at a molecular level.
If it is the case that the interview between Kaitlan Collins and William Barr isn’t shocking to the conscience of America’s newsroom bosses — and placed squarely in front of the American people as the vital matter it is — then we are in far deeper trouble than I thought.
Let’s take a step back.
What would the reaction have been if I said on national television five years ago that Trump’s lawyers would be arguing before the US Supreme Court that the president has the power to kill political opponents with some justices seeming to entertain the idea within five years time?
Incredibly, that precise argument is being made before the US Supreme Court the same week that Bill Barr decided to disclose that Trump frequently fantasized about killing political opponents from the White House.
Don’t worry about it though. Bill Barr says he doesn’t mean it because Trump could always be talked out of the worst ideas in the end. How very reassuring.
The FBI director reported to this man? He held a position of responsibility for America’s national security and was confirmed by the United States Senate — twice?
“The best and the brightest” has given way to the “worst and the dumbest.”
Let’s try this thought experiment. There are 50 people on a plane. Bill Barr is one of them, so are we, and the plane crashes deep in the Alaskan bush. Miraculously, no one was killed, but the bad news is that help is not on the way. We will have to hike out of the wilderness as a group for 100 miles to safety. We will have to cross five rivers and two mountain ranges.
Here is my question. Would anyone ask or care what Bill Barr said about anything? Truly? He doesn’t seem to have much common sense, or a particularly well-honed instinct for danger. His judgement is appalling, and he seems to have no moral compass whatsoever.
Amazingly, he ends the interview talking about the danger the country faces from — wait for it — Joe Biden, who is the “real threat to democracy.”
It’s the reason why Bill Barr, patriot, has to vote for the man who queried him about who he could kill when he was president.
Nothing to worry about there. Nothing at all.
“You can’t fix stupid,” as the old saying goes. Apparently Bill Barr is a supremely stupid man. He’s so stupid in fact, that it is okay to say it out loud.
Good grief.