Then-Attorney General William Barr reportedly lashed out at then-President Donald Trump, predicting that he was going to lose the 2020 presidential election because he acts “like an a**hole,” according to Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
In their new book titled “Peril,” which was obtained by Business Insider, the veteran reporters claim that Barr told Trump last year that he would not win the election if he kept alienating suburban voters that Republicans have traditionally relied upon to win national elections.
“There are a lot of people out there, independents and Republicans in the suburbs of the critical states that think you’re an assh*le,” Barr told him, according to Woodward and Costa. “They think you act like an assh*le and you got to, you got to start taking that into account.”
Trump responded by telling Barr that he wanted to see prosecutions of his “deep state” enemies such as former FBI Director James Comey ahead of the election, but Barr told him that wouldn’t be enough to drag him over the finish line.
“Your base cares about seeing [Comey] and the rest of those guys held accountable, but these other people don’t,” Barr said. “They don’t care about your f*cking grievances. And it just seems that every time you’re out there, you’re talking about your goddamn grievances.”
Trump refused to back down, however, and told Barr that his base loved him because he was a “fighter.”
Read more about the exchange at Business Insider.
