Here are some adorable baby animals. Relax, kick back, enjoy. Feel your anxiety melt away. It’s Friday.
"what digby sez..."
Month: February 2020
Emboldened after his impeachment acquittal, President Donald Trump now openly admits to sending his attorney Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to find damaging information about his political opponents, even though he strongly denied it during the impeachment inquiry.
The reversal came Thursday in a podcast interview Trump did with journalist Geraldo Rivera, who asked, “Was it strange to send Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine, your personal lawyer? Are you sorry you did that?” Trump responded, “No, not at all,” and praised Giuliani’s role as a “crime fighter.””Here’s my choice: I deal with the Comeys of the world, or I deal with Rudy,” Trump said, referring to former FBI Director James Comey.
Trump explained that he has “a very bad taste” of the US intelligence community, because of the Russia investigation, so he turned to Giuliani.”So when you tell me, why did I use Rudy, and one of the things about Rudy, number one, he was the best prosecutor, you know, one of the best prosecutors, and the best mayor,” Trump said. “But also, other presidents had them. FDR had a lawyer who was practically, you know, was totally involved with government. Eisenhower had a lawyer. They all had lawyers.
“Trump had previously denied that he sent Giuliani to Ukraine. Asked in November if he directed Giuliani to “do anything” in Ukraine, Trump said, “No, I didn’t direct him,” but went on to call Giuliani a “great corruption fighter.” Giuliani says he’s exposing legitimate corruption in Ukraine, even though his claims about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden have been widely debunked.
Caught in a lie. As usual.
But he’s certainly learned his lesson, amirite?
Ever since Dear Leader reassured us that the virus was going to be obliterated in the April heat, there hasn’t been a whole lot of coverage of the Wuhan virus. But it’s still out there.
Here’s the latest today from theprepared.com:
[12:32 pm] Another story on the virus’s economic impact, this time an attempt at an overview. How China’s coronavirus epidemic could hurt the world economy
[12:30 pm] The virus is now confirmed in Egypt.
[12:27 pm] The situation in Wuhan continues to be just chaos. A total mess, and the Chinese government’s heavy-handed response is making it so much worse. The New York Times reports: China Expands Chaotic Dragnet in Coronavirus Crackdown.
But the campaign, first announced last week in the city of Wuhan, already has been marred by chaotic conditions that have isolated vulnerable patients without adequate care and, in some cases, left them alone to die…
In their zeal to execute the edict, officials in Wuhan, a metropolis of 11 million, have haphazardly seized patients who have not yet tested positive for the coronavirus, in some cases herding them onto buses with no protective measures where they risked infection from others, their relatives said.
After that, patients have been sent to makeshift medical facilities that don’t provide the support they need to recover. With little to no dedicated medical staff on hand to help, some patients die.
[12:35 pm] In yesterday’s update we linked a story with a quote from Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch to the effect that we’re likely to see 40 percent to 70 percent of people worldwide infected in the coming year. In this twitter thread, Lipsitch expands on that forecast and provides important context for it:
I did actually say the quote that is going around, but the article contained vital context — we don’t know what proportion are symptomatic. Also we have only a rough estimate of what proportion of symptomatic people will have severe outcomes.
[12:21 pm] The CDC director thinks the virus will go pandemic and endemic in the US. This is basically the worst-case scenario, if true. Then we’re in the realm of “so what’s the fatality rate, and the percentage of cases that will need hospitalization?”
[12:18 pm] Yesterday’s update had a link to video of former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottleib’s Senate testimony on the coronavirus and the likelihood of a US pandemic. Now there’s a printout of the remarks, if you’d rather read than watch.
[12:12 pm] In some of our earliest dispatches from Beijing, we reported on this phenomenon of people turning to WeChat to beg for help with supplies and caring for sick loved ones. The South China Morning Post has a lot more on this in a big story.
[12:10 pm] We’ve been following the alarming lack of known coronavirus infections in Indonesia since last week — they’re a major trade and tourism partner with China, and they have the world’s fourth largest population. So there is no way this disease isn’t there, which means we have big surveillance gaps. Anyway, there’s a good primer on the Indonesia situation so far.
[12:10 pm] A good overview of the hotly contested question of aerosol transmission of the virus. We still don’t know, but it’s possible.
[12:09 pm] The testing kits for the coronavirus that the CDC is sending out don’t actually work.
[12:08 pm] More on healthcare system supply chain problems, this time in India. The coronavirus effect: Dependence on Chinese raw materials puts Indian drug makers at risk. “The outbreak has severely hit China’s Hubei province, which is home to thousands of people who work at the factories that produce the raw materials. These workers are now either quarantined or unable to get to work. If raw-material supply to the global pharma industry stalls, the world will face a crisis unlike ever before.”
[12:07 pm] Coronavirus’ Assault on Wuhan Mental Hospital Alarms Experts. “Experts are for calling for more stringent measures to protect people with psychological conditions after at least 80 patients and staff at a mental health facility in Wuhan contracted the coronavirus that has now killed more than 1,300 people in China and infected over 60,000 worldwide.”
[12:04 pm] There are likely many fatalities related to COVID-19 that aren’t directly from infections, but are because the healthcare system is overloaded with both infected patients and “worried well”, so that people who are seriously ill with other problems are crowded out.
This is definitely happening in Hubei, and will happen in other places the virus takes hold.
The situation of patients with other severe diseases in Hubei is getting more dire each day. Cancer patients can’t get chemotherapy; uremia patients nowhere to get dialysis. Many are posting on weibo appealing for help with the hashtag “novel coronavirus secondary disaster”.
[11:40 am] More and more stories coming out on the economic impact of the coronavirus. It’s just getting started, too. China’s Shipping Nears a Standstill Amid Coronavirus Disruption
[11:39 am] Don’t forget to add this to your pile of pandemic preps. Toilet Paper Is the Hot New Currency in Singapore and Hong Kong
[11:36 am] A Catastrophic Drop in Tourism Haunts Hong Kong in the New Year “In the wake of protests and a deepening recession, workers fear for their jobs as shops and restaurants are starved of revenue from visiting mainlanders.”
The CDC said today that this virus will be with us a year from now.
The Washington Post reports:
The department revealed the decision to McCabe’s team Friday; it was unclear whether there were other plans to make it public. The move was said to infuriate Trump, who has raged publicly and privately in recent months that McCabe and others he considers political enemies should be charged with crimes.
The decision could amplify the tension between Trump and his Justice Department, especially Attorney General William P. Barr, who on Thursday publicly rebuked the president for tweeting about Justice Department criminal cases.AD
A White House official said that Trump was not given a heads-up and was upset, and that White House lawyers moved to calm the president. The official said Trump “believes very strongly that action should be taken.”Trump suggests former FBI officials committed treason.
Maybe this new investigation of the Mueller investigation, from which the Stone and Flynn case originally came, will appease him. It’s certainly what Barr assumes.
And it might work. The WaPo article last night reported that Trump has been so angry about Comey and McCabe not being thrown in jail because his buddies all had to face indictments and trials for their crimes. (“It’s unfaaaair” he wailed like 4 year old.) Maybe if Barr can find a way to let Flynn off the hook he’ll feel a little bit better about McCabe.
Unfortunately, Flynn’s case is in the hands of a federal judge. The best Barr can hope for is that they pull some wingnut judges in an appeal or he can put some federal investigators and prosecutors in jail to pay for McCabe’s “get out of jail free” card. All of that takes time. We’ll have to see if Trump is ok with that.
On the other hand, maybe Barr can indict James Comey for some alleged leaking from years ago. That would probably dry some of the White House toddler’s tears, at least for a while.
It looks like there is some serious institutional churn going on at DOJ:
The Justice Department will not bring charges against former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe for lying to investigators about a media disclosure, according to people familiar with the matter and McCabe’s legal team, ending a long-running inquiry into a top law enforcement official who authorized the bureau to investigate President Trump and soon became the commander in chief’s political punching bag.
The department revealed the decision to McCabe’s team on Friday; it was unclear if there were other plans to make it public. The move will surely infuriate Trump, who has raged publicly and privately in recent months that McCabe and others he considers political enemies should be charged with crimes.
Attorney General William P. Barr has assigned an outside prosecutor to scrutinize the criminal case against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, according to people familiar with the matter.
The review is highly unusual and could trigger more accusations of political interference by top Justice Department officials into the work of career prosecutors.
Mr. Barr has also installed a handful of outside prosecutors to broadly review the handling of other politically sensitive national-security cases in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, the people said. The team includes at least one prosecutor from the office of the United States attorney in St. Louis, Jeff Jensen, who is handling the Flynn matter, as well as prosecutors from the office of the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen.
Over the past two weeks, the outside prosecutors have begun grilling line prosecutors in the Washington office about various cases — some public, some not — including investigative steps, prosecutorial actions and why they took them, according to the people. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations.
So, Barr is playing both sides here, trying to placate the DOJ by dropping the McCabe case — which will make Trump furious — while at the same time opening up another “investigation of the investigators” to protect that looney tunes Michael Flynn, which will please him greatly.
I think Trump is far less concerned about protecting his pals because he has the pardon power hanging over their heads to keep them quiet. It’s the revenge that he wants — no, needs.
Indeed, revenge is his raison d’etre.
We’ll see how he reacts but there is zero evidence that he’s going to follow any kind of strategy when it comes to this. Maybe he’s become a mature strategic thinker overnight. But I doubt it.
Stay tuned.
It’s been quite a week in Donald Trump’s great post-impeachment vengeance crusade. The final vote in the Senate was just nine days ago — but he has hit the ground running. While the Democrats still seem to be paralyzed by the verdict they knew was coming, there seems to be the beginning of some institutional blowback gathering within the government.
We went through the strange and inexplicable John Bolton charade during the impeachment trial. The former national security adviser obviously leaked information about what he knew to the New York Times but has refused to come forward personally to tell what he knows for self-serving reasons, the most important of which being that he wants to sell his book. His revelations were interesting but proved to be irrelevant to the proceedings.
A couple of weeks ago former White House chief of staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, made a bit of a splash when he said publicly that he believed Bolton. This week Kelly really let go, criticizing Trump for his humiliating mistreatment of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and strongly condemning his recent pardons of accused war criminals. He isn’t the first former military official to do so. Former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, resigned over that and reportedly the commanding officer of the Navy SEALs will retire early for the same reason. All of this suggests that there may be more dissension at the Pentagon over Trump’s inappropriate interventions in military matters.
But the institution that seems to be in open rebellion, at long last, is the Department of Justice, which Trump has been treating as his personal protection racket. This week saw four federal prosecutors withdraw from the Roger Stone case after one of the most nakedly political acts so far by Attorney General Bill Barr, which is really saying something. One of them resigned from DOJ altogether.
As I noted earlier, it appeared that Justice, following the sentencing guidelines, had asked for a sentence of seven to nine years for Trump’s old friend. When the president got wind of this he tweeted angrily that it was a miscarriage of justice. Lo and behold, the next morning the department announced that it would rescind that recommendation, which everyone naturally saw as a political decision. Trump tweeting his congratulations to Barr for doing so just came as confirmation of the obvious.
The rumblings from the legal community have become deafening, even from some people who are longtime Republicans and close associates of Barr:
Ayer worked directly under Barr in the George H.W. Bush administration.
Even Federalist Society members are anonymously admitting to the press that this all looks bad for Barr. That’s something no right-wing lawyer can ignore.
When you put together this latest blatant political interference with the fact that Barr had unceremoniously removed the U.S. attorney for the D.C. district, which has been handling Stone’s case as well as others of interest to the president, including the case of former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, it apparently became impossible to overlook the corruption any longer. That former U.S. attorney, Jessie Liu, whose nomination to a post in the Treasury Department was abruptly withdrawn on Wednesday — almost certainly at Trump’s direction — resigned from the government on Thursday.
It seems clear that a true insurrection was brewing in the department because late on Thursday, Barr went to ABC News and admitted that he had personally made the decision to intervene in Stone’s sentencing recommendation, claiming he did so before Trump had tweeted out his feelings on the issue. He seemed to think that was the main issue that concerned people (which it wasn’t), and went on to complain about the president’s tweets making him look bad:
Nobody believes that Bill Barr needs a presidential tweet to know what he’s supposed to do. Everyone in America knows that Trump believes he and his cronies are above the law, and that he wants to put his enemies in jail. And no one has been more accommodating to Trump’s wishes than his attorney general, which is why the Washington legal community is up in arms.
You can see why Trump may have thought that tweeting about Justice Department business was fine in any case. He’s been doing it for years. Just the other day, Barr himself was in the front row clapping and smiling as Trump spent an hour venting about impeachment and listing his enemies, including the “top scum at the FBI,” against whom he vowed revenge. He had no reason to suspect that Barr was concerned about “integrity,” a concept that is as foreign to Donald Trump as “compassion” or “dignity.”
Frankly, if it weren’t for the fact that even some of his own cronies were suddenly distancing themselves over his blatant fealty to Trump’s personal interests, Barr undoubtedly wouldn’t care either. He isn’t worried that his friends will see him as Trump’s Roy Cohn. He’s afraid they will think he is incompetent at getting the job done.
I don’t buy that this was all carefully choreographed by Barr and the White House, however. Barr may have signaled to Trump that he needed to make some kind of statement to calm the troops and Trump may have agreed. But there is no way that Trump OK’d Barr calling him a bully or telling him what he can and cannot do. In fact, while the White House issued a statement saying that Trump hadn’t minded what Barr said, it very pointedly said that Trump would keep tweeting because he has freedom of speech like everyone else.
I suspect Trump is furious over this. Lou Dobbs of Fox Business, one of Trump’s most loyal media mouthpieces, certainly was, turning angrily on Barr only a day after praising him extensively. It is simply not believable that Trump has suddenly developed the emotional maturity and strategic intelligence to accept a subordinate publicly insulting him and challenging his decisions in order to advance a larger agenda. Having that happen on the same day that he heaped praise on Barr in an interview with Geraldo Rivera had to sting.
This is the first rift between Trump and his attorney general, and it will be interesting to see what happens next. According to the Washington Post, Trump has been raging for weeks, demanding that Barr lock up his mortal enemies, including James Comey and McCabe in particular. The New York Times has reported that Barr’s hand-picked special counsel, John Durham, is looking to charge members of the intelligence community in his investigation of the origins of the Russia probe, and that those might include former CIA director John Brennan.
Will Barr try to smooth things over with Trump by taking such rash actions? Can he get away with that, with DOJ staff in active rebellion? After months of toadying and appeasing and giving the president everything he wanted, Barr is now walking a familiar Trump tightrope. As John Kelly knows, that doesn’t tend to end well. We’ll have to see if Barr is more skilled at balancing on it than all those who came before him.
Update: The DOJ announced this morning that they will not criminally charge McCabe. Do you think this guy is happy about that?
Trump has repeatedly complained about FBI Director Christopher A. Wray in recent months, saying that Wray has not done enough to change the FBI’s culture, purge the bureau of people who are disloyal to him or change policies after violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
He has also tweeted many times that he thinks Comey should be charged with crimes, and he was particularly upset that no charges were filed over the former FBI director’s handling of memos about his interactions with Trump. An inspector general report faulted the former director for keeping some of those memos at his home and for arranging for the contents of one of the memos to be shared with a reporter after Comey was fired in 2017.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz referred Comey’s handling of the memos to prosecutors for possible criminal prosecution, but lawyers quickly determined it was not a close call and did not seek to build a case.
That sent Trump into a rage, according to people briefed on his comments. He complained so loudly and swore so frequently in the Oval Office that some of his aides discussed it for days, these people said. Trump repeatedly said that Comey deserved to be charged, according to their account.
“Can you [expletive] believe they didn’t charge him?” Trump said on the night of the decision, these people said. Trump has also wanted charges filed against Comey’s former deputy, Andrew McCabe. A separate inspector general investigation concluded that McCabe lied to investigators about his role in authorizing disclosures for a Wall Street Journal story in October 2016 about internal FBI tensions over an investigation of the Clinton Foundation. A grand jury in Washington seemed poised to make a decision on the case last year before fizzling into inaction.
Trump’s anger over the lack of charges against FBI personnel flared again in January, prompted by two unrelated developments, according to people familiar with the matter.
First, prosecutors updated their position in the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, saying a sentence of some prison time would be appropriate. Around the same time, The Washington Post reported that U.S. Attorney John Huber in Utah — tapped years earlier to reinvestigate several issues related to vague allegations of corruption against Hillary Clinton — had quietly wound down his work after finding nothing of consequence.
Those two developments further enraged the president, according to people familiar with the discussions. These people said that while the public debate in recent days has focused on leniency for Stone, the president is more upset that the Justice Department has not been tougher on his perceived enemies.
In the president’s mind, it is unacceptable that people such as Comey and McCabe have not been charged, particularly if people such as Stone and Flynn are going to be treated harshly, these people said.
If Barr’s job is really impossible to do with all the terrible criticism he’s getting from everyone including Trump, there’s a simple solution:
Quit.
Other Chinese-made Trump gear is likely delayed by the coronavirus. But these jackets got through:
It was only a matter of time before MAGA footsoldiers adopted uniforms. Sen. Lindsey Graham got a slick jacket, too. These may be only prototypes. But really, what was it going to take before claxons began sounding in American newsrooms? Brown shirts and Sam Browne belts?
No, just Attorney General William Barr. His intervention this week in the sentencing decision for Trump ally Roger Stone finally woke a somnambulant national press to the fact there is gambling banana republicanism going on in Washington, D.C.
A jury last November found Stone, 67, guilty of seven felonies including lying to Congress, obstructing the Russia investigation, and trying to block testimony by another witness that might have exposed him. The president who was not pleased with the verdict was not pleased with the recommended sentence of 7 to 9 years filed Monday. Trump made his displeasure know via tweet at 1:48 AM Tuesday.
In the Trump administration, a presidential tweet doubles as an interoffice communication. Barr got the memo.
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice stepped in to amend prosecutors’ recommendation and reduce it. The entire prosecution team immediately resigned from the case. One federal attorney left the government entirely. Trump aimed a followup tweet at presiding U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson.
An “existential threat”
Seeing equal protection under law crumbling before our eyes finally shocked at least some journalists into acting like watchdogs, Dan Froomkin writes at Salon:
There is no room for both-sidesi-sm on this issue. Instead, it’s time to explain, in no uncertain terms:
- How badly Trump is perverting the Justice Department
- The importance of insulating the application of the law from political influence
- How the apolitical application of the law is a key distinction between democracies and banana republics
- Who is abetting Trump
- What it will take to rebuild what he has left in ruins
Froomkin summarizes the week’s coverage of the latest Trump violation of legal norms. Greg Sargent’s take was suitably pointed:
Washington Post opinion writer Greg Sargent, for instance, declared on Wednesday morning that “Trump is now openly flaunting his success in manipulating law enforcement for nakedly political and corrupt ends.” Sargent also quoted Michael R. Bromwich, the Justice Department inspector general from 1994 to 1999, saying that Trump “has utter disregard for our system. That is an existential threat to the institutions that most of us value, prize and have served.”
While CNN, MSNBC, and opinion writers raised the alarm, the evening news continues to soft-sell Trump’s corruption. Trump is “testing the independence of the Justice Department,” as CBS tells it. NBC Nightly News reported a “firestorm over Roger Stone” and quoted Trump without pushback. The New York Times drew sharper criticism.
NBC News’ Ken Delanian reported that Department of Justice employees almost walked out en masse on Wednesday over Barr’s actions. Barr responded to criticism by telling ABC News the constant tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job.” But what really makes quietly flushing away Trump’s emissions a headache for Barr is that the toddler insists on showing them off.
Lee Moran writes at Huffington Post:
Critics suggested Barr’s comments to ABC News were simply a coordinated attempt between him and Trump to defuse the outrage sparked by his Department of Justice’s botched sentencing recommendation for Trump’s longtime ally Roger Stone, which Trump had fiercely disagreed with.
Trump doesn’t do coordination. Barr will hear about this.
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Trump announced that “Hopey” HIcks is coming back on board. And now Spicey and Reince will be returning as well. He needs his security blankees around him:
President Donald Trump has rehired his former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former press secretary Sean Spicer almost three years after both men unceremoniously departed the White House.
Priebus and Spicer will each join the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, according to a White House announcement Tuesday. As a part of the commission, the pair will interview and recommend to their former boss national finalists for appointments.
Spicer, who resigned in July 2017 out of dissatisfaction with the hiring of Anthony Scaramucci as communications director, courted controversy for repeatedly telling lies on behalf the president. Among those were false claims that Trump’s inauguration had the biggest crowds in history, that the president would have won the popular vote in the 2016 if not for voter fraud, that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower and that Adolf Hitler had not used chemical weapons.
Spicer has become something of a pop culture fixture since his exit from the White House. He joined the reality competition show “Dancing With the Stars,” in which he and other famous contestants were paired with professional ballroom dancers as they competed for the mirror ball trophy, last year. He announced on Cameo that he would record Valentine’s Day messages for people who were willing to pay him $199 earlier this week.
Priebus, whose six-month tenure as chief of staff was the shortest in history for anyone who did not hold the position on an interim basis, was fired in July 2017. A number of reasons cited for his termination, including: Trump’s disappointment with Priebus’ stewardship of the campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act and a belief that Priebus lacked the strength to run the White House.
All is forgiven.
I wonder if he knows how much leaking those two did? It’s pretty clear that they have spilled their guts to a whole lot of journalists and book authors. I man where do you suppose people heard about this?
When Reince Priebus was the White House chief of staff, President Donald Trump repeatedly asked him whether badgers, the state animal of Priebus’ home state of Wisconsin, are “mean to people,” how they “work,” and how aggressive they can get.
That’s according to “Sinking in the Swamp: How Trump’s Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington,” a new book by the Daily Beast reporters Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng. During that time, Trump would often “waste Priebus’s time” during briefings about foreign and domestic policy by pelting him with questions about badgers, the book says.
Here’s what the book says about the president’s fascination with badgers:
“After Trump was reminded that the short-legged omnivore was practically synonymous with the Badger State, he’d make a point of bringing it up at seemingly random occasions to his beleaguered chief of staff.
“‘Are they mean to people?’ Trump at least twice asked Priebus in the opening months of his presidency. ‘Or are they friendly creatures?’ The president would also ask if Priebus had any photos of badgers he could show him, and if Priebus could carefully explain to him how badgers ‘work’ exactly.
“He wanted Reince — resident White House badger historian, apparently — to explain to him Wisconsin’s obsession with the animal, how the little critters function and behave, what kind of food they like, and how aggressive or deadly they could be when presented with perceived existential threats.
“Trump also wanted to know if the badger had a ‘personality’ or if it was boring. What kind of damage could a badger to do a person with its flashy, sharp claws?
“An obviously enthralled president would stare at Priebus as the aide struggled for sufficiently placating answers, all the while trying to gently veer the conversation back to whether we were going to do a troop surge in Afghanistan or strip millions of Americans of healthcare coverage.”
Of course, he doesn’t read so Priebus has nothing to worry about.
This is all such bullshit. Don’t believe a word of it:
“I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody,” Mr. Barr said in an interview with ABC News. “And I said, whether it’s Congress, newspaper editorial board, or the president, I’m going to do what I think is right. I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.”
Mr. Barr’s remarks were aimed at containing the fallout from the department’s botched handling of its sentencing recommendation for Mr. Trump’s longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr., who was convicted of seven felonies in a bid to obstruct a congressional investigation that threatened the president.
Mr. Trump’s criticisms “make it impossible for me to do my job and to assure the courts and the prosecutors in the department that we’re doing our work with integrity,” Mr. Barr said.
He added, “It’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.”
People close to the president said they were caught off guard by the interview.
Bullshit. Here’s how you can tell:
Barr will keep his job. Guaranteed.
The more lenient recommendation that Barr imposed will not be rescinded. Or Trump will simply pardon Stone.
Finally, the media will fall over Barr praising him for his courage in standing up to the president. But everyone in DC knows what Barr really said:
“Next time, your Biglyness, please give me a call and I’ll just take care of it, ok?”