Barr says dealing with Trump, advisers like ‘wrestling an alligator’

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr said on Sunday that dealing with former President Trump was like “wrestling an alligator.”

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to discuss his new book, “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General,” Barr recalled how Trump liked to surround himself with so-called 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 them on track, and we were successful generally, but … it was frequently like wrestling an alligator,” said Barr.

“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,” added Barr. “He’s ultimately to blame for that. There’s something about him that he wants to be surrounded by yes men.”

Barr said that while he does not support Trump being renominated as the Republicans’ 2024 presidential candidate, he would vote for Trump if he were to become the party’s candidate again.

During his interview with Chuck Todd, Barr also said that he had not believed Trump would win reelection in 2020, supposedly telling him as much as early as April of that year.

“I went in in April and told him that I thought he was going to lose the election and … 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.”