(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Look out Antifa! Bill Barr is watching your leaders fly around the country racking up those frequent flier miles and hitting Triple Platinum Marriott rewards status. Did you ruffians think you could just go from town to town, swiping your Anarchobank Mastercard for hammers and sickles to use in the night’s marauding and avoid the eagle eye of our fearless Attorney General? Think again, thugs!
Oh, it’s funny because there are actually people out there who think it’s true. Whether Deputy Dawg himself actually believes this sh*t is an open question. But he was certainly giving it the old Kirkland and Ellis try last night with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
Asked whether he had instructed the FBI to look into Trump’s insane ranting to Laura Ingraham about hordes of black-clad thugs boarding planes to fly across the country and start riots, Barr insisted that, “I don’t have to ask the FBI because we received numerous reports of individuals coming from Portland, Washington, Seattle, and several other cities for the specific purpose of causing a riot.”
Note that Barr didn’t say “credible reports” as opposed to easily debunked Facebook hoaxes or nonsense whispered into the presidential ear by a conspiracy loving congressman from California. Because the DOJ has made exactly zero arrests of people who bought a $400 ticket and flew clear across the country to start “riots” at the Republican National Convention.
Where would these imaginary traveling rioters get the money for airfare and hotels? Barr’s not saying, but safe bet it rhymes with Seorge Goros!
“They are flying around the country, we know people who are flying around the country, we know where they’re going, we see some of the purchases they’re making before the riots of weapons to use in those riots,” Barr said. Although the president apparently thinks cans of soup are weapons, so perhaps the AG is referring to bags of groceries from the Piggly Wiggly when he claims to be tracking purchases of riot swag.
Interestingly, Barr refers to “people going into Kenosha from different states,” while failing to note it was a gun-toting teenager from Illinois hopped up on a toxic brew of imaginary patriotism and toxic masculinity who killed two people last week, not those itinerant anarchists we’ve all been warned about.
But if Mr. Barr is looking for a guy who actually does travel from town to town trying to start trouble, he might check in on the Patriot Prayer leader who told the Washington Post that he and his bros “go into smaller areas, and we have been putting all of our effort into meeting with victims of government overreach.” It’s just a thought!
But if Barr can’t imagine groups with strong ties to white supremacists posing a real threat, perhaps it’s due to his truly bizarre ideas on racism.
“I don’t think there are two justice systems,” he told Wolf Blitzer.” “I think the narrative that the police are in some epidemic of shooting unarmed black men is simply a false narrative and also the narrative that’s based on race.”
What do those words even mean? Dunno, but they definitely don’t mean that black men are three times as likely to be killed in encounters with police as white men.
“I think there are some situations where statistics would suggest that they are treated differently. But I don’t think that that’s necessarily racism,” Barr said. Which kind of sounds exactly like racism, but can’t possibly be because, ummm, Jesse Jackson?
“Didn’t Jesse Jackson say that when he looks behind him and he sees a group of young Black males walking behind him, he’s more scared than when he sees a group of white youths walking behind him,” Barr added. “Does that make him a racist?”
No, seriously, that really happened.
On voting by mail, Barr exuded a similar Grandpa’s-okay-to-drive-but-don’t-ask-him-about-the-war-or-you’ll-ruin-Thanksgiving vibe. Here he is flipping out because Wolf Blitzer pointed out that five states vote entirely by mail without a problem.
“Wolf, this is playing with fire! This is playing with fire,” he barked, waggling his finger in rage. “We’re a very closely divided country here. People have to have confidence in the results of the election and the legitimacy of the government.”
Which is an odd position for a man whose boss has insisted for the past four years that 3 million undocumented immigrants voted illegally in California and that New Hampshire polls were swamped with hordes of people bussed in from Massachusetts. The entire Republican strategy at this point amounts to little more than destroying confidence in the results of the election and legitimacy of the government. (Well, that plus racism.) But Barr wasn’t done.
“People trying to change the rules to this methodology which as a matter of logic is very open to fraud and coercion is reckless and dangerous,” he shouted, before admitting that he himself votes absentee, as does virtually every high-ranking member of the Trump administration.
But while Barr was absolutely certain — despite being unable to cite a scintilla of evidence — that universal voting by mail is rife with fraud, there was one question of election law which flummoxed the great man: Is it legal to deliberately cast your ballot twice?
President Trump forced the issue by telling his followers in North Carolina to cast mail-in ballots and then going to try to vote in person as well. Because why not encourage your supporters to commit felonies en masse!
“So let them send it in and let them go vote, and if their system’s as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote. If it isn’t tabulated, they’ll be able to vote,” Trump actually said out loud.
“So that’s the way it is. And that’s what they should do.”
That is not what they should do, a fact Bill Barr knows perfectly well.
BLITZER: It sounds like he’s encouraging people to break the law and try to vote twice.
BARR: Well, I don’t know exactly what he was saying, but it seems to me what he’s saying is, he’s trying to make the point that the ability to monitor this system is not good. And if it was so good, if you tried to vote a second time, you would be caught.
Ah, yes. Despite the plain language of his exhortation, the president was urging his followers to vote twice metaphorically. But it’s still illegal to cast two ballots, even if you do it to just make a point, right?
BARR: Well, I don’t know what the law in that particular state says and when that vote becomes final.
BLITZER: Is there any state that says you can vote twice?
BARR: Well, there’s some … maybe you can change your vote up to a particular time. I don’t know.
BLITZER: But that’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying test the system.
BARR: Well, if you know what he’s saying, why are you asking me?
Cool, cool. The president of the United States is dispatching his followers to commit vote fraud en masse, and the Attorney General is busy pretending that mail-in voting is the real crime.
Who could have predicted that there could be a worse AG than Jeff Sessions, and yet … here we are.
Transcript: The Situation Room [CNN]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.