I noticed that we didn’t have a thread just for Bill Barr yet, but given the news and events of the last two days, I figured we needed on to vent about this lying pushead and to keep track of news about him: there’s gonna be a lot of those things from here on out.
Let me first say I was aghast this mendacious shitbag was confirmed. In fact, I was more surprised by how easy his confirmation was than by his actions since then.
Fuck you, Bill Barr, you lying sack of awful. You deceitful coward. You craven fucking boot-licking, ass-kissing goddammned fucking lying delusional anti-American bastard: fuck you.
This guy is quite the practitioner of the legal rope-a-dope. I half expected him to challenge one of his questioners on the definition of “is”.
He must drive his wife nuts.
“What would you like for dinner?”
"Well, as it’s only 11 AM, I’m trying to grapple with the word “dinner”. Also, I might “like” dinner, but then again I may thoroughly dislike it, depending on what’s being served.
I misremember who Lawrence O’Donnell was quoting — possibly Adam Schiff — but the person described a couple of “tells” that indicate Barr’s trying to evade a question (even more than usual). The first is that he asks to have the question repeated; the second is that his response will devolve into an ever-deeper parsing of one or two salient words.
These are both glaringly evident in his (non)response to Kamala Harris’s question about the White House suggesting targets for investigation. I half-expected him to start debating the meaning of “is.”
That’s pretty much what I wanted to say, so I will add a big “fuck you” to all the Republicans who think this administration’s behavior and practices are acceptable. They are not, Fuck You.
You cannot simply ask “did Trump suggest this” or “did Trump” order this. Everything he said is considered to be simply “thinking out loud” or “talking with his mouth” - until someone acts on those words, and Trump decides to own the outcome.
This is what I call the “Trump Uncertainty Principle”. No particle of an idea can be disentangled from Trump’s quantum bullshit universe until he perturbs it by the act of seeking credit for it.
I hope every future interrogator will consider these quantum bullshit mechanics when formulating their questioning strategy. Kamala Harris made a decent showing.
A dishonest, dishonorable coward. Which is true of pretty much everyone who has remained in Trumpland. The only thing Barr might have above most of the rest is a shred of competence (in the service of evil, of course), and until recently, a shred of respect outside of the Trump bubble (the Trubble?).
I am ashamed to admit how naive and credulous I was when Barr was first appointed, but I’m going to do it anyway. :smack:. I read articles and heard commentary by people I at least semi-respected that said Barr is an institutionalist, he respects the norms of DOJ, he cares about his reputation, he’s close personal friends with Bob Mueller, blah blah blah. I even harbored a wishful fantasy that he had deliberately bamboozled Trump into nominating him so he could come in and reveal himself to be a crusader for truth, justice and the American way.
Anyone who at this point is willing to accept a major post from Donald Trump has an extreme dearth of either intelligence or personal character, at a very minimum.
I hope he doesn’t show up for his House hearing today and the Sgt At Arms frog-marches him to fucking jail for Contempt of Congress. Of course then he will be a hero and a martyr to the Trumpians and all we’ll hear about is how it’s an attempted coup by the Democrats. :rolleyes:
Who was the poster who said Bill Barr was the love child of Elton John and John Chancellor? That was hilarious, I can’t get that image out of my mind now.
Yeah, aside from his views on executive power, nothing indicated to me that he was an off-the-charts oligarch fanboy loyalist. Something I overlooked in retrospect was his connection to Alfa Bank, which is based on Moscow. That should have been more of a warning sign that it was at the time.
Initially, Trump did what most incoming presidents do, inheriting some staff and hiring the rest from among his immediate political circles, not really knowing whether or not they would work out for him. Trump is an authoritarian. Trump insists on loyalty over ethics, loyalty over the law, over everything. Initially, I suppose that those who agreed to work for Trump did so with the assumption that there would be disagreements but that they could influence him and shape him: Kelly, Mattis, McMaster, Tillerson, Sessions, Priebus, Cohn, and others. But people now know who Trump is. It’s understood that if you agree to work for Trump, you work for Trump, not the American people. Anyone who works with him now and who truly doesn’t believe that is just dangerously naive, which may not be much better.
I wish Harris had said “Suggest. S-U-G-G-E-S-T. Suggest. For cryin’ out loud, someone toss this halfwit a fucking dictionary!”
At first I thought Barr was a surprisingly decent choice, a guy who had the job before who would have some respect for the rule of law. How wrong I was.
I don’t believe a contempt of congress charge would necessarily be a ticket to jail - at least not right away. It would immediately be litigated in court, which would probably take us past the end of Trump’s first term. For all practical purposes, until further notice, the attorney general and the justice department is a legal arm of the Republican party. Given enough time, they’ll do the same to the courts.
You bake a dozen cookies (to raise funds for an orphanage). You leave them to cool and go and do other things, while Bill Barr sits in the kitchen reading the Mueller report (don’t ask why).
Returning a while later, you notice that there are less cookies than before.
“Have you eaten one of my cookies?”, you ask Barr.
“No, I haven’t eaten one of your cookies”, Bill Barr replies.
You count the cookies and there are only ten. So you check the camera you have set up in your kitchen to capture evidence of paranormal activity, and it shows Bill Barr eating two cookies.
You confront him with the video evidence.“You lied, Bill Barr! You said you didn’t eat my cookies!”
Bar replies: “You asked me whether I’d eaten one of your cookies, but I ate two of your cookies.”
This is how Barr misleads and avoids the spirit of a question.