‘Felt like a hostage video’: Ex-White House aide blasts Bill Barr’s defense of Trump

Former Attorney General Bill Barr’s turn from one of Donald Trump’s most outspoken critics to a political backer sparked outrage from one of his former colleagues on Monday.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, the former president’s communications director, shredded the Republican’s reasons for supporting Trump’s reelection bid during an interview with Kaitlan Collins, the CNN anchor who questioned Barr about his support during a sit-down interview on Friday.

“Honestly, the interview felt like a hostage video,” Griffin mused to Collins as she summarized. “I noticed that he wasn’t making regular eye contact with you, especially when he was making some of the more outlandish claims, like gas stoves. It felt like he was kind of clinging to some right-wing talking points that no one is going to deliver this election. because of electric vehicles or gas stoves, instead of talking about issues he knows are fundamental.”

During the sit-down, Barr defeated President Joe Biden who implemented a “collectivist socialist agenda” by replacing gas stoves and forcibly feeding electric vehicles to Americans.

This defense did not succeed with Griffin.

“Donald Trump would fire his attorney general if he hadn’t resigned,” Griffin recalled. “I think it’s downright disgraceful that he’s turning this around now.”

Barr, a lifelong Republican, served as Trump’s second attorney general from 2019 to 2020 before resigning over the 45th president’s 2020 claims of election interference.

On Monday, Griffin said she was shocked by Barr’s claim that he did not take Trump’s death demands for the person who leaked information about his hiding place in his White House bunker seriously during the George Floyd protests.

“Whoever did that, he or she should be charged with treason!” Trump reportedly said this. “They must be executed!”

Barr told Collins that Trump was just having a tantrum.

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“I remember him being very angry about that,” Barr said. “I actually don’t remember him saying ‘execute’. But I wouldn’t argue with it, you know?”

Barr added: “The president would lose his temper and say things like that. I doubt he would have actually carried it out.”

That’s not true, Griffin said.

“I knew of the only (execution demand) example I personally witnessed, I had heard of other examples secondhand, but he seemed to dismiss it and then elaborated on the following sentence: ‘Oh, don’t take him literally!'” Griffin said.

“Well, we didn’t take them literally when he tried to steal the election or incited a mob to go to the Capitol and it turned violent,” she said. “It’s time for people to take Donald Trump at his word much more literally.”

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