Once an unapologetic Trump lapdog, Bill Barr transformed into a howling Rottweiler in his testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, which last week made the former attorney general the star of its second public presentation in a historic series of hearings.
Though Barr’s frothing performance dominated the news cycle for its blistering assessments of Trump’s claims regarding an ostensibly stolen election — “idiotic,” “disturbing,” “nonsense,” “absolute rubbish,” “crazy” — the money quote arose from Barr’s judgment on Trump’s frame of mind in the months after Election Day in 2020.
“I was somewhat demoralized because I thought, ‘boy if he really believes this stuff, he has, you know, lost contact with, with — he’s become detached from reality,’ ” Barr said.
He’s “become” detached from reality?
As we are this summer presented a series of Watergate parallels, even with narratives a half-century apart, here’s the somehow necessary reminder that while the 37th president, Richard M. Nixon, went crazy during his final months in the White House, the 45th president, Donald J. Trump, brought crazy through the front door on his first day. In van loads of designer luggage.