Conservative rips Bill Barr: He knows 'manic' Trump is 'unfit' for the presidency — but would vote for him anyway

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, once a devoted Donald Trump loyalist, has been highly critical of the former president in recent interviews — pushing back against the Big Lie and blaming him for the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Nonetheless, Barr won’t rule out the possibility of voting for Trump in 2024’s presidential election if he is the Republican nominee. And Never Trump conservative Amanda Carpenter, in an article published by The Bulwark on March 8, slams Barr as a glaring example of the Republican Party’s inability to break free of Trump despite how “awful” he is.

“Former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr pretty much concedes that Donald Trump is an awful human being who is unfit to serve in the Oval Office,” Carpenter explains. “But there’s just something about Trump that’s too good for Barr to give up. Barr is in the news today — as opposed to when he made headlines misrepresenting the findings of the Mueller report or planting foreign-ballot conspiracies —because he has a book to sell. His story is that a ‘manic’ Trump ‘went off the rails’ after the 2020 election and is ‘responsible’ for the January 6th attack.”

Carpenter continues, “One would think these would be deal-breakers in evaluating a potential presidential candidate. Wrong. When pressed, Barr admitted that he’ll vote for Trump in 2024 should Trump become the GOP nominee.”

After keeping a relatively low profile in 2021, Barr has been speaking out about the 2020 election in his media appearances and his new book, “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General” (released on March 8). Barr has made it clear that he doesn’t think Trump deserves the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, but he told NBC News, “Because I believe the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic Party, it’s inconceivable to me that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee.”

The fact that Barr is so critical of Trump but still won’t rule out the possibility of voting for him in 2024, Carpenter laments, shows how dysfunctional the Republican Party has become.

“Barr is literally saying he can’t mentally grasp the idea that voting for a Democrat would be a better alternative to voting for someone he directly observed trying to hijack American democracy,” Carpenter laments. “Someone, please make a commercial featuring this broken man: This Is Your Brain on Partisanship…. It’s relatively easy to find Republicans who will lament Trump’s miserable qualities and then spin on their heel to discuss how, of course, they would support him again.”

Carpenter cites former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as two other examples of Republicans who believe that Trump crossed a dangerous line after the 2020 election but said they will vote for him in 2024 anyway if he is the nominee.

“Understand this: People like Barr, Christie, Haley, and (former Vice President Mike) Pence will offer their criticisms when there is a whiff of opportunity — either in the form of speaking fees, book sales, or the ability to test future political prospects,” Carpenter argues. “Then, they start measuring the cost-benefit of their calculated risk. Do they get applauded as a strong, principled leader who could be the future of the party? Or are they ostracized by the influencers at Fox News, their donors, targeted voters, and future employers?”

Carpenter adds, “On paper, there’s an entire coalition of Republican officials who should be, if you take them at their words, ‘Never Again Trump.’ But only a few of them — Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and the former Trump aides who publicly campaigned against him in 2020 — seem willing to make the necessary sacrifice of giving up some of their partisan identity to do so.”