William Barr says liberals' reaction to Trump's election in 2016 was 'contemptible' and 'beyond the pale'

• William Barr says liberals' reaction to Trump's election in 2016 was "contemptible."
• Barr in his new book said Trump's opponents calling themselves "the resistance" was "beyond the pale."

Former Attorney General William Barr in his new memoir condemned liberals and progressives for their reaction to President Donald Trump's election in 2016, calling their initial opposition to his victory "contemptible."

In "One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General," Barr breaks with Trump, who he worked for as attorney general from 2019 to the end of 2020. Barr was critical of Trump, sharing how the former president "went off the rails" after the 2020 election and should not be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024.

Barr also rebuked President Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the left more broadly, calling the "radical progressivism" he saw emerging during the Obama years a kind of "Jacobinism—the same kind of revolutionary and totalitarian ideas that propelled the French Revolution, the Communists of the Russian Revolution, and the Fascists of twentieth-century Europe."

For that reason, Barr wrote, the country was "in no mood for four more years of Obama-era progressivism and Clintonian mendacity" by the time 2016 rolled around.

"The collective meltdown of the political and cultural elite, together with the bewildered response of the mainstream media, was something to behold," Barr wrote about Trump's 2016 election. "Trump's adversaries, powerful as they were, had no idea what to think. He had done it."

Liberals' response to Trump's electoral victory was "contemptible," Barr wrote.

"No tactic, no matter how abusive, was out of bounds if it helped destroy his administration. The ends truly justified any means. Talk of impeachment began the moment he won office," he said.

"The survival of our democratic system depends on our capacity to transfer power peacefully through elections. At a minimum, that means political leaders and the citizenry have to accept the results of elections and the legitimacy of duly elected governments," Barr went on to say. "I thought this was essential in 2016, just as I later thought it was in 2020."

Trump, for his part, refused to accept his 2020 election loss and went to extreme lengths to overturn it in the courts and in Congress, which sparked Barr's resignation from the Department of Justice and caused a falling out between the two men.

Barr wrote that Trump told him "you must hate Trump" and "you would only do this if you hate Trump" after Barr contradicted the former president's claims of widespread fraud affecting the 2020 election, an account Trump disputes.

Barr also said that the loosely-organized group of liberal activists and elites — largely political and media figures who opposed Trump's presidency through organizing, activism, protests, and political resistance in Congress — calling themselves "the resistance" was "beyond the pale."

"It is typically used to describe an insurgency against an occupying military power and connotes an illegitimate government," Barr said. "Use of this word was grossly irresponsible, as was the media's failure to censure it."

Barr wrote that Trump's political opponents "viewed themselves essentially as guerrillas engaged in a war to cripple a duly elected government, even if it meant that the country would suffer as a result."

Barr also wondered what would have happened if Trump had received a "honeymoon" period of high approval ratings and general goodwill, or "had been met by a modicum of good faith on the other side."

"We will never know, but I believe the country would have benefited and likely seen more of the constructive, problem-solving style of government that President Trump previewed on election night, and less of the combativeness that came to define his term," Barr wrote.

Despite Barr defending Trump at several points throughout the book, including saying that he "deserves enormous credit for sparing the nation a Clinton presidency," Trump has hit back at his former attorney general and censured Barr in increasingly personal terms.

Trump called Barr "slow, lethargic," and "a big disappointment" in a letter to NBC News' Lester Holt, saying his book will be "long, slow, and very boring" if it's "anything like him."