I have the 'biggest crowds': Trump knocks Bill Barr's claim he has minimal 'verbal skills'
In a Sunday evening rant, Donald Trump posted to Truth Social that his former attorney general, Bill Barr was a "LOSER" who didn't know what he was talking about when he alleged that "his verbal skills are limited."
After listing off a slew of insults, including the accusation Barr "couldn't do the job" in all-caps, Trump argued it is all about the size of the crowd, not what you say.
"...so now this Moron (sic) says about me, to get even, 'his verbal skills are limited.' Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before," wrote Trump. "Tell that to the biggest political crowds in the history of politics, by far. Bill Barr is a LOSER!"
It's unclear if Trump was being sarcastic about his verbal skills being limited. In fact, his limited vocabulary was frequently discussed in the first campaign. By 2020 there were larger issues to address.
Sharon Begley, the former senior writer on science and discovery for STAT, wrote about a study the site did in 2017 that showed Trump was once far more articulate. It was only during the 2016 campaign that it became clear the new president had frequent moments when he didn't make any sense.
“ … there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself — and the Russians, zero," Begley quoted Trump saying at the time.
"STAT reviewed decades of Trump’s on-air interviews and compared them to Q&A sessions since his inauguration. The differences are striking and unmistakable," she wrote. "Research has shown that changes in speaking style can result from cognitive decline. STAT therefore asked experts in neurolinguistics and cognitive assessment, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists, to compare Trump’s speech from decades ago to that in 2017; they all agreed there had been a deterioration, and some said it could reflect changes in the health of Trump’s brain."
Questions about Trump's cognition have dogged him for years as a result of some of his statements similar to the one above.
Barr didn't use the language to imply Trump was somehow ill, rather he simply explained: “If you get him away from ‘very, very, very,’ you know, the adjectives … they’re unfamiliar to him and they spill out, and he goes too far."