It seems like everyone is trying to figure what is motivating William Barr to debase himself and destroy his credibility. Why did he even want the job of defending the president? And, let’s be clear, that is how he views his job description as attorney general of the United States.
For James Comey, he’s succumbed to Donald Trump’s nefarious influence.
Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Mr. Trump that it took days for the president to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.
But more often, proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.
But that doesn’t explain why Barr took the position in the first place. Eliana Johnson of Politico writes he had to be dragged kicking and screaming, but he was ultimately convinced to accept the nomination by his longtime conservative legal buddies who share his affection for the Unitary Executive theory.
Ultimately, his friends managed to talk him into it. “We had discussions over a period of time, and I encouraged him to take it,” said George Terwilliger, a conservative attorney and longtime friend of Barr’s.
Barr’s social and professional circle was critical in drawing him into Trump’s orbit. Barr pals, including Terwilliger, Cooper, Luttig and former Virginia Attorney General Richard Cullen are part of a group of elite conservative litigators who were once wunderkinds in the the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. They grew up together and have fought countless political battles alongside one another…
…They are united by a firm belief in a theory of robust presidential power dusted off by Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese. Known among legal scholars as the theory of the “unitary executive,” they argue that the Constitution grants presidents broad control of the executive branch, including — to take a salient Trump-era example — the power to fire an FBI director for any reason at all.
Yet, it would seem possible to defend the unitary executive theory without becoming an unethical lackey for a criminal president.
I think the simplest explanation is that he’s just another example of an American whose brain has been rotted by consuming too much right-wing media. He’s defending Trump for the same reason Fox News says he should be defended. Trump is a victim of a witch hunt–a plot to destroy him hatched by liberals and Obama holdovers in the FBI and Justice Department. I think he actually believes this, which would explain his behavior better than the idea that Trump corrupted his morals or that he’s just putting up with Trump in order to defend the power of the presidency.
Watching cable news, I see a phalanx of former Justice Department officials who are somewhere between flummoxed and flabbergasted by Barr’s behavior. They can’t imagine what has happened to him. I think the answer is simple. He sat in his living room watching Sean Hannity and it destroyed his brain, his moral compass, and his potential worth as a public servant.
Isn’t this the same person who obstructed the Iran-Contra investigation? He doesn’t have a moral compass, he never did. Serving the public? When did he ever do that? He serves the conservative orthodoxy, not the public.
True. What I find even more amusing is Comey trying to pass himself off as a paragon of integritude. He recently tweeted a list of five jobs that he held. One was a “strike replacement high school teacher.” What kind of asshole brags about being a fucking scab?
Comey did this?
https://twitter.com/Comey/status/1122165090046943239
He’s a goddamn menace, all 6’9″ of him, or whatever.
He totally did. And on top of it, today he wrote an op-ed for the Times excoriating “accomplished people lacking inner strength” like Bill Barr.
I mean, talk about the pot and and the kettle. Dude just does not know when to shut the hell up.
This is not conservative orthodoxy as much as it is full-on right-wing radicalism, complete with the fully self-conscious subversion and degradation of law for strictly political ends. In fact, we haven’t seen much conservative orthodoxy in evidence for a while now. The right-wing radicals have appropriated the tribal label “conservative” without the ideology.
Johnson’s stenographic account of Barr’s reluctance is laughable on its face. As for the “Unitary Executive theory,” it is intended to apply only to executives in the Repugnican Party.
Barr is doing much more than defending Individual-1. Inter alia, by inviting foreign interference, he is working hard (and very deliberately) to damage the next election.
“Unitary Executive Theory” is to American “conservatives” what Fuhrerprincip was to National Socialism. Also, too, it goes without saying that the theory only attaches to Repub prezes; Dem prezes need not apply, ha-ha.
As for your Bill Barr Brain-Rot theory, there’s simply no reason to think that “conservatives” elites are somehow immune from the effects of decades of Foxite shit-eating. The effects of Barr’s incessant sewage-gorging is that he now is dragging around 200+ lbs of conservative belly fat, metaphorically speaking.
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