William Barr identifies the moment Trump went “off the rails”
One Damn Thing After Another. The New York Times printed extracts over the weekend, including some damning lines concerning former President Donald Trump.Barr says Trump “lost his grip” following his election defeat in 2020.
The two men famously fell out over Trump’s claims of election fraud.“He stopped listening to his advisers, became manic and unreasonable, and was off the rails,” Barr writes in his new book. “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.”Related: Madison Cawthorn praises “genius” Donald Trump: “He’s like a father to me”Barr went on to call the idea of another Trump presidency campaign “dismaying”.
For 2024, he urged the Republican Party to find other, younger candidates who did not show Trump’s “erratic behavior.”“Donald Trump has shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed.”Barr says he believed Trump could have won the 2020 campaign if he had “just exercised a modicum of self-restraint, moderating even a little of his pettiness.”However, that was not to be, and Barr says Trump lost fair and square.“The election was not ‘stolen,’ ” Barr writes. “Trump lost it.”Related: Eric Trump calls dad from stage to tell him he loves him.
This was Trump’s response.Following the election, the Department of Justice, to Trump’s fury and frustration, was unable to find evidence to support his claims of election fraud.
