Former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr appeared to flummox CNN host Kaitlin Collins during an interview on Friday after she asked him a number of loaded questions about his stint in former President Donald Trump’s administration.
Collins got schooled by Barr when she pressed him about his belief that Joe Biden is a greater “threat to democracy” than Trump while insisting that he thinks “the real threat to democracy is the progressive movement.”
“So it’s not about me. I think that, that I’ve said this all along. If faced with a choice between two people, neither of which I think should be president, I feel it’s my duty to pick the person who I think would do the least damage to the country,” Barr explained.
“And I think Trump would do less damage than Biden. And I think all this stuff about a threat to democracy, I think the real threat to democracy is the progressive movement and the Biden administration,” he continued.
“The Biden administration, or President Biden himself,” Collins asked. “Biden’s support for the progressive agenda,” Barr explained. Acting dumbfounded, Collins pressed Barr on how he could possibly think that Biden — whose Justice Department is actively prosecuting Biden’s chief political rival, Trump — was a bigger threat to democracy.
“Well, where are we losing our freedoms?” he replied. “How are our freedoms being constrained. They’re being constrained by, the progressive government and, you know, democracy, especially, you know, from the Anglosphere democracies, the Five Eyes and so forth, the threat’s never been from autocratic government on the right.”
That led Collins to press Barr for examples. “The threat to freedom and democracy has always been on the left,” he pointed out. “It’s the collectivist, socialist agenda. And that is where we’re losing our freedom. Parents are losing the freedom to control their children’s education. And, you know, people can’t speak their mind without losing their jobs and things like that. This is worse than the McCarthy era. Where is that coming from? It’s not coming from the right.”
Collins mentioned Trump’s objections to the results of the 2020 election, which was an amusing position considering that Collins’ network had dedicated a significant amount of airtime to covering the Russian collusion hoax. In response, Barr highlighted issues such as the border crisis, the surge in crime in our cities, and increasing regulations, such as the move to ban gas stoves and gas-powered vehicles through regulations.
“We’re not enforcing our borders, we have open borders, we have lawlessness in our cities. We have regulations coming fast and furious. So, telling people what kind of stoves they can use, and what kinds of cars they have to drive, and eliminating cars and so forth. Yes, those are — those are the threats to democracy,” he said.
“Those are the threats to democracy,” he pointed out. “Major changes are being made in our country without the democratic process. And they’re being made by bureaucrats in these agencies.” A clearly frustrated Collins then tried to claim Republicans were trying to do the same thing.
“Okay. Pause! You cannot argue that Republicans across the country are not doing that as well,” she claimed. “My own hometown, there’s a huge fight at the library over which books kids can read. This is not something that is a single-party fight.”
That let Barr to ask her: “Don’t you think there should be some limits on what people are able to read?” he asked, knowing full well that the books in question are borderline pornographic, if not outright pornography.