Willam Barr Warned Trump That Suburban Voters 'Think You're An Asshole,' Says Book

He'd have to appeal to more than his base to win reelection — because many voters were sick of his "f**king grievances," the attorney general reportedly said.
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Former Attorney General William Barr reportedly warned Donald Trump months before he lost reelection that Republican suburban voters “think you’re an asshole.”

That’s according to Business Insider, which obtained an early copy of “Peril,” the new book by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. In one passage, the book describes Barr attempting to give Trump helpful campaign advice by telling him that those suburban voters don’t care about his “fucking grievances,” Business Insider says.

In the blunt Oval Office meeting in April 2020, Barr reportedly urged the president to focus on the national response to COVID-19 and the economic recovery, and “not all this other shit, not every grievance you have.”

The book then recounts Barr trying to convince Trump he needs to win over more moderate Republicans if he wants to win reelection, according to Business Insider. “The main problem,” Barr reportedly told the president, “is you think you’re a fucking genius, politically.”

“There are a lot of people out there, Independents and Republicans in the suburbs of the critical states that think you’re an asshole,” Barr reportedly told Trump. “They think you act like an asshole and you got to, you got to start taking that into account.”

If Trump kept on the way he was, Barr warned, “You’re going to lose the election,” the book says, according to Business Insider.

Trump lost to Joe Biden by 7 million votes, then launched a whole new set of grievances about how the “rigged” election had been “stolen” from him.

Barr recounted in an interview with The Atlantic earlier this year that he had told Trump in late November that his claims of voter fraud were “bullshit.”

The former attorney general also publicly declared in early December that the Department of Justice had found no evidence of voter fraud that would change the outcome of the election. He announced his resignation days later.

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