Former Attorney General William Barr blasts ex-boss Donald Trump in a forthcoming book, saying the former president went “off the rails,” the New York Times reports.
Barr, who served as Trump’s head of the Justice Department for nearly two years, levels the criticisms in One Damn Thing After Another, which William Morrow plans to publish next week.
Barr writes that Trump changed after losing the 2020 presidential election. “He stopped listening to his advisers, became manic and unreasonable, and was off the rails,” he writes. “He surrounded himself with sycophants, including many whack jobs from outside the government, who fed him a steady diet of comforting but unsupported conspiracy theories.”
Barr refused to back up Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen, leading the attorney general to resign on Dec. 23, 2020. The Washington Post reports that Barr blames Trump’s election loss on “his self-indulgence and lack of self-control” and says it would be “dismaying” if he ran again for president in 2024.
“Trump cared only about one thing: himself,” Barr writes. “Country and principle took second place.…Donald Trump has shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed.”
One Damn Thing After Another is slated for publication on March 8.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
