Attorney General William sent a message to partisan critics trying to appeal to his sense of vanity with concern trolling about his reputation: “Everyone dies”
Barr made the statement in an interview with Jan Crawford taped in Alaska Thursday that aired on CBS This Morning on Friday. Crawford was pressing Barr about how his once pristine reputation was being besmirched with attacks on him as a liar and Trump loyalist. Barr’s response was blunt in its forthrightness, but he explained himself.
Attorney General Barr highlights why he opened an investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation. Barr tells @JanCBS there's evidence that makes him believe senior government officials may have acted improperly to authorize surveillance of Pres. Trump's 2016 campaign. pic.twitter.com/CksxmmIu8i
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) May 31, 2019
JAN CRAWFORD: But when you came into this job, you were kind of, it’s like the US Attorney in Connecticut, I mean, you had a good reputation on the right and on the left. You were a man with a good reputation. You are not someone who is, you know, accused of protecting the president, enabling the president, lying to Congress. Did you expect that coming in? And what is your response to it? How do you? What’s your response to that?
WILLIAM BARR: Well in a way I did expect it.
JAN CRAWFORD: You did?
WILLIAM BARR: Yeah, because I realize we live in a crazy hyper-partisan period of time and I knew that it would only be a matter of time if I was behaving responsibly and calling them as I see them, that I would be attacked because nowadays people don’t care about the merits and the substance. They only care about who it helps, who benefits, whether my side benefits or the other side benefits, everything is gauged by politics. And as I say, that’s antithetical to the way the department runs and any attorney general in this period is going to end up losing a lot of political capital and I realize that and that is one of the reasons that I ultimately was persuaded that I should take it on because I think at my stage in life it really doesn’t make any difference.
JAN CRAWFORD: You are at the end of your career, or?
WILLIAM BARR: I am at the end of my career. I’ve you know–
JAN CRAWFORD: Does it, I mean, it’s the reputation that you have worked your whole life on though?
WILLIAM BARR: Yeah, but everyone dies and I am not, you know, I don’t believe in the Homeric idea that you know, immortality comes by, you know, having odes sung about you over the centuries, you know?
JAN CRAWFORD: So you don’t regret taking the job?
WILLIAM BARR: No.
Complete interview at links in this tweet:
You can hear @JanCBS' full interview with Attorney General William Barr on the #CTMPodcast.
Listen on @ApplePodcasts: https://t.co/Dp3ytRXn40
Or @Spotify: https://t.co/0cYIgQIgCm pic.twitter.com/IcG3Kr8cqD
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) May 31, 2019
Text of complete interview at this link.
