As Donald Trump’s criminal cases have advanced, the former president and his defense attorneys haven’t just professed his innocence; they’ve also claimed that the former president enjoys near-complete immunity from crimes he might’ve committed during his White House tenure.
This has led multiple jurists to inquire as to whether Team Trump believes the Republican could get away with ordering the murder of Americans he disapproves of. (“It would depend,” the Republican’s lawyer told the Supreme Court last week, though he added, “We can see that could well be an official act.”)
Of course, for many of the former president’s partisan allies, the question itself is absurd to the point of being useless, since the scenario is so far-fetched. That said, late last year, Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as Trump’s White House communications director, reflected on Trump’s rhetoric after someone on his team leaked the fact that he went to a White House bunker during social-justice protests in the summer of 2020.
“Right before I resigned, I was in an Oval Office meeting with a dozen other staffers, and somebody had, he thinks, leaked a story about him going to the bunker during the George Floyd protests,” Farah Griffin said in December. “And he said, ‘Whoever did that should be executed.’”
On Friday night — two days after Trump took fresh steps to humiliate William Barr — the former attorney general appeared on CNN and anchor Kaitlan Collins asked about this. He replied:
“I remember him being very mad about that. I actually don’t remember him saying, ‘executing.’ But I wouldn’t dispute it, you know? … The president would lose his temper and say things like that. I doubt he would have actually carried it out. I don’t, you know.”
Oh. So according to Trump’s former attorney general, the former president — the one Barr has characterized as an “incorrigible” and “erratic” narcissist — would sometimes “say things.” This would include, evidently, Trump making comments about killing Americans who upset him.
This dovetails, of course, with the recollections of former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who wrote in his book that Trump asked about whether the military could shoot American civilians protesting on American streets.
But don’t worry: Bill Barr “doubts” that Trump would’ve “actually” followed through on this.
How comforting.
In the same interview, the CNN host asked, “So just to be clear, you’re voting for someone, who you believe tried to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, that can’t even achieve his own policies, that lied about the election, even after his attorney general told him that the election wasn’t stolen? And as the former chief law enforcement in this country, you’re going to vote for someone who is facing 88 criminal counts?”
Barr initially responded that he takes issue with “a lot” of the pending felony counts pending against the former president. Collins quickly added, “Even if 10 of them are accurate?” to which Barr again reiterated his support for the Republican Party’s 2024 ticket. Asked how he could justify such a position, the former attorney general, who took a great many steps to unravel the rule of law, said, “The rule of law is unraveling.” It was, to be sure, an ironic complaint given Barr’s background. The former attorney general went on to complain that the Biden administration is “telling people what kind of stoves they can use, and what kinds of cars they have to drive, and eliminating cars and so forth. Yes, those are the threats to democracy.” If Barr’s goal was to set fire to whatever shreds of credibility he might’ve still had, while appearing like a low-information crank, the on-air appearance was a great success.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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