Bill Barr says Trump likes to call anyone who disputes false election fraud claims a 'RINO'
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
- Bill Barr has repeatedly gone against Donald Trump's stances on the election and Mar-a-Lago raid.
- In response, Trump recently called the former attorney general "a weak and pathetic RINO" on social media.
- Barr brushed off the accusation in a Tuesday interview with Fox News.
Former US Attorney General Bill Barr recently laughed off Donald Trump's accusation that he was a RINO, or a Republican In Name Only, saying it's a pejorative the former president tends to use against anyone who denies his claims of election fraud.
Barr was responding to a rant Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday, in which the former president said he had "no guts" and was a "weak and pathetic RINO who was so afraid of being Impeached."
"A RINO for him is anyone who disagrees with him that the election was stolen" Barr rebuked during an interview with Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Tuesday.
He then recalled his childhood when he passed out leaflets supporting Barry Goldwater, the Arizona senator who was known as one of the forefathers of the modern conservative movement.
"As someone who handed out Barry Goldwater literature when I was 14 years old on the Upper West Side, it's a little silly," he said.
—The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) September 6, 2022
The former attorney general was once a staunch defender of Trump, but following the 2020 election, he has repeatedly butted heads with the former president in public and private comments.
In his recorded testimony with the January 6 committee investigating the Capitol riot, Barr said Trump had "become detached from reality" and that his stolen elections claims were "bogus" and "bullshit."
He has since reaffirmed his stance in several interviews.
More recently, Barr has generally come to the defense of the Justice Departments' investigation into Trump's handling of classified White House documents.
When Trump and Republican allies called the FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago home "politically motivated," the former attorney general said the attacks on federal agents were "misplaced" and speculated that the DOJ most likely had "pretty good evidence" to carry out the search.
In the Tuesday interview with MacCallum, Barr also said he believed the approval of Trump's request for a court-appointed party to review the documents seized by federal agents "was wrong." He has previously told The New York Times that Trump's request was a "crock of shit."
Barr is not the first person to be accused by the former president of being a RINO.
Trump has lobbed the insult at Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and the state's secretary Brad Raffensperger after they refused to challenge the 2020 election results. The former president also used the label against Republicans who voted to impeach him for inciting an insurrection.