Although President Donald Trump still had two days left in his term, multiple media outlets on Monday were quick to write his final chapter, dramatizing what Axios called “the collapse of a president.”
Both Axios and The Hill reported on the rift that emerged between Trump and his longtime ally, Attorney General William Barr, over the effort to expose widespread vote fraud.
Thousands of eyewitnesses, experts and others have attested to the presence of fraud in several key battleground states—some of which also allowed Democrat executives to unconstitutionally change state laws without approval from the state legislatures.
In early December, Barr was called into a meeting with Trump over public remarks that undermined Trump’s messaging about the fraud.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” he told the Associated Press.
Leftist media homed in on the remarks to validate their own claims that Trump was spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories.
At the meeting, Barr stood his ground, telling Trump that the theories about vote fraud were “bulls**t” and that the legal team he had gathered to pursue it was “clownish,” Axios reported.
“I’m a pretty informed legal observer and I can’t f**king figure out what the theory is here,” Barr reportedly said. “It’s just scattershot. It’s all over the hill and gone.”
The showdown, just two weeks before Barr would tender his resignation, may have been the final straw in an increasingly frayed alliance that already had seen strains during the summer riots in places like Portland and Seattle.
Barr had sided with Trump’s top defense officials in opposing a strong military response, saying it would be better to let the unrest die out.
But frustrations continued to build as Barr actively and passively thwarted Trump’s efforts to expose corruption among the Democrats in advance of the election.
Barr already had been needled and publicly chastised by the president for dragging his feet in Special Counsel John Durham‘s probe of FBI corruption in the Russia collusion hoax, and for having remained silent for too long regarding a criminal probe of Hunter Biden.
By the time the vote fraud dispute emerged, it was clear that the two faced irreconcilable differences.
“Why would you say such a thing? You must hate Trump,” the president said in response to an interview Barr gave denying adequate evidence of vote fraud to overturn the election. “There’s no other reason for it. You must hate Trump.”
In fact, many judges—including the US Supreme Court, ultimately sided with Barr and other White House advisers, such as Pat Cipollone, who doubted the campaign lawyers like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
However, in what was always bound to be an unprecedented and irregular election, Trump’s supporters were shocked that all of the options available to them for demonstrating vote fraud—including the Justice Department, the courts and the media—were completely dismissive of even pursuing it.
Trump, likewise, seemed to grow alternately annoyed and surprised with Barr for his resistance.
During the early December meeting, Trump reportedly pointed at the television, on which One America News was broadcasting a Michigan Senate hearing on the fraud.
He asked Barr if he had been watching the proceedings, to which Barr replied that he hadn’t.
“Maybe you should,” Trump said.
