Barr told Trump that supporting a GOP-led Supreme Court case against Obamacare would be a 'fucking loser for you,' book says

• AG Barr tried to convince Trump not to join a Supreme Court lawsuit last year challenging Obamacare, a new book says.
• The suit was brought by 18 Republican attorneys general and was widely panned as far-fetched.
• Barr is quoted as calling the case "a fucking loser," adding, "It's hard not to laugh at our argument."
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Then-Attorney General William Barr warned then-President Donald Trump in May 2020 that the GOP's latest attempt before the Supreme Court to get rid of Obamacare would be "a fucking loser for you."

That's according to "Peril," a forthcoming book by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, an early copy of which was obtained by Insider. The book is set to be released next week.

The book said that Barr made the comment during a White House meeting with Trump and his senior-most policy and legal advisors. The president wanted the Justice Department to join a lawsuit brought by 18 Republican state attorneys general arguing that the Affordable Care Act should be struck down.

At the crux of the lawsuit was the claim that because Congress had rendered a core provision of the law known as the "individual mandate" - that people buy health insurance or pay a tax penalty - moot by reducing the penalty to zero, the entire law should be killed.

When Trump expressed interest in the federal government joining the lawsuit, Barr reportedly stepped in.

"Mr. President, this case is not going to win. You're going to be lucky to get anything better than 9-0 on this," the attorney general said, according to the book. At the time, the Supreme Court was made up of five conservative and four liberal justices. Two of the conservatives, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, were Trump appointees.

Barr continued to press his point, adding that Trump could suffer a significant political loss by joining the case.

"Mr. President, this is an election year," he said, according to the book. "The liberals on the Supreme Court voted to hear this case because they realize this is a fucking loser for you. We're in the middle of a COVID epidemic. And you are now creating uncertainty as to people's medical coverage. And you haven't put up a substitute and we're going to lose the case."

But Trump insisted that he needed to "be with Texas" because "that is my base," the book said. Barr pushed back again, saying that Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general leading the case, "has his constituency. You have your constituency. I don't see outsourcing our policy to the fucking state of Texas."

Trump's senior counselor, Kellyanne Conway, also reportedly stepped in to sway Trump's decision, saying that the case was a "loser" that "doesn't help you." She also added that Republicans lost their House majority in 2018 in part because of their stance on Obamacare and universal healthcare.

"Mr. President," Barr reportedly said, "this case sucks. It's hard not to laugh at our argument."

But Trump was undeterred and the Justice Department joined the lawsuit. In June, the Supreme Court dismissed the legal challenge, California v. Texas, in a 7-2 vote. Kavanaugh and Trump's latest appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the court after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death last September, voted in the majority. Justices Samuel Alito and Gorsuch dissented.

The nation's high court argued that the GOP-led lawsuit lacked standing, preserving health care coverage for millions of Americans. It was the third time the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act since the law was enacted in 2010.

Republicans had long been hostile to former President Barack Obama's legacy achievement. Trump had campaigned on repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a new health care law, yet in his four years in office, he failed to do so.