Ex-AG Barr compares dealing with Trump advisers to ‘wrestling an alligator’

Former Attorney General William P. Barr took a swipe Sunday at colleagues in former President Donald Trump’s administration, comparing working with them to “wrestling an alligator.”

Mr. Barr made the comment on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to promote his new book, “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General.” He claimed that Mr. Trump surrounded himself with aides and advisers who amounted to little more than “yes men.” 

“He cast his net broadly and talked to a lot of people and Cabinet secretaries, all of us, frequently had to wrestle with them to accomplish things that we thought would keep [the White House] on track and we were successful generally, but … it was frequently like wrestling an alligator,” Mr. Barr said of Mr. Trump. “After the election, he would just listen to this group of people who had no government position, but were telling him exactly what he wanted to hear,” 

Mr. Barr, who served as the nation’s top law enforcement officer in the second half Mr. Trump’s first term, added that the blame ultimately lay with Mr. Trump for empowering such individuals. 

“There’s something about him that he wants to be surrounded by yes men,” he said.

The interview comes as Mr. Barr is the subject of criticism from both the left and right over his new memoir. In the book, Mr. Barr chronicles his often tumultuous tenure in the Trump administration. His recounting of the lead-up to the 2020 election and its aftermath have specifically drawn attention.

Mr. Barr has said the election was not rigged, as Mr. Trump and his allies contend. He also writes that had Mr. Trump “just exercised a modicum of self-restraint, moderating even a little of his pettiness,” the president’s re-election would have been secured in a landslide.

“I went in in April and told him that I thought he was going to lose the election,” Mr. Barr said on “Meet the Press.” “That his personal behaviors, obnoxious behavior, was turning off key blocs of voters and he was going to lose. And on election night, I felt he was going to lose and I was actually surprised it was as close as it was.”