'Reckless travesty': Trump’s former AG Bill Barr bemoans 'flawed leader' as right-wingers sink bill

11 April 2024

Democratic strategists and President Joe Biden's reelection campaign have a long list of issues to attack GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump on, from abortion rights to Obamacare to his abundance of legal problems.

Another, according to CNN, is the chaos that characterized his four years in the White House — chaos that, Democrats warn, would also characterize a second Trump term. And to illustrate their point, they need only quote Trump's former U.S. attorney general, Bill Barr.

CNN's Stephen Collinson, in an article published on April 11, explains, "Some top Democrats worry that Americans have forgotten the chaos that raged every day Donald Trump was president, and that voters' faded recall of the uproar will end up handing him a second term. The presumptive GOP nominee is, however, doing a good job of jogging memories as he blazes a trail of disruption through Congress, immigration and national security policy, reproductive health care and the nation's top courts."

Collinson adds, "After storming to the Republican nomination, Trump is again the epicenter of controversy. His volatile personality, loyalty tests, rampant falsehoods, thirst to serve his political self-interest and the aftershocks of his first term are compromising attempts to govern the country. And the election is still seven months away."

Chaos has been a prime feature of Rep. Mike Johnson's (R-Louisiana) months as House speaker, and Collinson stresses that Trump is encouraging that chaos.

Collinson notes that on Wednesday, April 10, Johnson "suffered another stunning defeat" when "hard-right GOP members blocked a bill to reauthorize a critical surveillance spying program at Trump's behest."

The CNN journalist adds that "19 Republicans, including some of Trump's loudest backers in the House, bucked Johnson and voted with Democrats to block consideration of the bill." And Barr expressed his frustration when, during an April 10 interview with CNN's Annie Grayer, he described the actions of Trump and his loyalists as "a travesty and reckless."

Barr told Grayer that Trump is motivated by "personal pique rather than rationality and sound policy."

The former U.S. attorney general argued, "We're faced with probably the greatest threat to the homeland from terrorist attack, and our means of defending against that is FISA. And to take that tool away, I think, is going to result in successful terrorist attacks and the loss of life."

Barr also said of Trump, "I think that he's a flawed leader, and this shows one of the reasons he is flawed."

Collinson points out that FBI Director Christopher Wray "is expected to tell Congress" that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) is an "absolutely indispensable tool" for national security.

"Trump's entanglement in some of the most intense political storms rocking Washington, and reverberating even beyond U.S. shores, offers fresh evidence of his power — expressed through his capacity to make key elements of the Republican Party bend to his will," Collinson explains. "It highlights his mercurial personality and a political style that relies on instinct rather than long-term strategy. And it is leaving no doubt that the mayhem that burst out of the Oval Office during his administration would return at an even more intense level if he gets back there in 2025."

Stephen Collinson's full CNN article is available at this link.

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