With friends like this who needs enemies? posits the old adage. And it’s a question that comes to mind as the Kamala Harris campaign amplifies the opinion of former Trump administration Attorney General William Barr about his one-time boss and the current GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Barr recently said he’d vote for Trump in 2024 no matter what, but before that Barr indicated that Trump’s conduct made him poorly suited to hold the highest office in the land, saying Trump was like a “defiant 9-year-old always pushing the glass to the edge of the table.”
Barr’s indictment of Trump’s conduct, including his assessment of Trump as a “consummate narcissist,” makes it no surprise that the Harris campaign is amplifying Barr’s damning post-administration assessment of Trump’s temperament and fitness — mainly because Barr’s take on Trump expressly matches the Harris campaign’s take on Trump.
Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr: “The fact of the matter is he is a consummate narcissist…He will always put his own interest and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest.” (2023)pic.twitter.com/wpXyxVqIo9
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) April 11, 2024
Both parties — Barr and Harris — portray Trump as a politician who will “always put his own interests and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country’s [interests].”
In the clip above, Barr encapsulates the main charge Harris will level at Trump from here to November.
NOTE: Barr notably resigned his post at the DOJ before Trump’s term ended and told the press, to Trump’s consternation, that the DOJ had found no evidence to question the 2020 election results that Trump continued to call “rigged.”
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said at the time, while still praising Trump as someone whose accomplishments were achieved in spite of “relentless, implacable resistance.”
Harris has a history of repeating Barr’s words for effect, having butted heads with the AG when she was in the Senate.
Employing her skill set as a former prosecutor — in a video the campaign also shared (see below) — Harris challenged what she characterized as Barr’s reluctance to answer critical questions under oath about the DOJ’s handling of the Russia election interference investigation and the Mueller report.
So good. Kamala Harris knew exactly how the pieces should have moved in DOJ and Bill Barr wasn’t ready for it. Trump will never debate her, in my opinion. She has no fear of speaking truth to his type of perverted power. pic.twitter.com/d0WeuLqHwP
— Kevin McNamee (@kwmcnamee) July 23, 2024