Former President Donald Trump on Saturday returned to the rally stage for the first time since he encouraged his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6. His campaign-style event at Ohio’s Lorain County Fairgrounds showed that the defeated Republican is still preoccupied with his 2020 election lies and willing to reward whoever is eager to help spread them. Trump’s sustained refusal to accept reality comes as his ex-officials are taking steps to publicly distance themselves from the undemocratic attacks. Among them is former Attorney General William Barr, who, though he did little to shoot down Trump’s election falsehoods at the time, said in an interview that appeared in the Atlantic on Sunday that he suspected “it was all bullshit” from the start.
Barr resigned from his position in December of last year, shortly after he told the Associated Press that the Justice Department had tried and failed to find election-altering evidence in the 2020 presidential race. In a series of interviews with ABC’s Jon Karl, Barr is now speaking out about the lead-up to his explosive break with Trump in the final stretch of the administration. At the time, Barr wanted to be able to tell Trump, who would inevitably confront him about his decision, that he had done his due diligence, he told Karl. “My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time. If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it,” Barr said. “But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there.”
When Barr didn’t substantiate Trump’s false election claims, he told Karl that Trump responded to the perceived betrayal in the third person, saying: “You must hate Trump. You must hate Trump.”
Barr may be taking a stand against Trump’s Big Lie now, but in the immediate aftermath of the election, the then-AG was widely criticized for giving prosecutors the ability to look into “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities that “could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State”—a move that overturned an established Justice Department policy and was seen as bolstering Trump’s arguments. As the Atlantic’s David Frum points out, Barr’s informal inquiry helped advance the evidence-free allegations of voter fraud that inspired the pro-Trump mob to wreak deadly havoc on the Capitol.
To Karl, Barr recalled how then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had, since mid-November, urged Barr “to inject some reality into this situation” for the purpose of maintaining control of the Senate. McConnell, like Barr, did not publicly voice his concerns in the immediate aftermath of the election, silence that helped Trump’s allegations take hold among Republican lawmakers and MAGA supporters alike. Today, the Big Lie is still alive and well inside the GOP, from the local level—where officials in multiple states reportedly face demands to review the 2020 results—to the office of the top House Republican.
But Trump’s rally on Saturday showed how fringe his shrinking support has become. The group included Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia’s QAnon-promoting congresswoman who reportedly warmed up the Ohio crowd with calls for Dr. Anthony Fauci’s removal and questions of “who is president?”—prompting chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” MyPillow CEO and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, against whom an election technology company has filed a defamation lawsuit over stolen-election claims, was also embraced by the crowd before Trump’s arrival. The pre-show involved a Cincinnati-based math teacher giving “a PowerPoint presentation with charts and numbers” in an attempt to substantiate evidence-free election fraud allegations. “The crowd sat quietly as he clicked through his slide show,” according to Politico.
Trump was in Ohio to support former aide and 16th district candidate Max Miller, whose primary challenger, Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, is among the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol attack. Trump has vowed to exact revenge on defectors by backing their opponents. But other than blasting Gonzalez as a “sell out and fake Republican” and briefly praising Miller, forward-looking comments were few and far between in Trump’s address. He instead focused on rewriting the past, airing old grievances, and further undermining the integrity of the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden. “They used Covid to steal the election,” Trump told the thousands of supporters gathered in the fairgrounds, according to Politico.
Diverting further attention from Miller’s bid was the potential of Trump’s own. Attendees interviewed by Politico were hopeful that Trump would announce a third run for the White House. As supporters made their way to the fairgrounds, vendors selling “Trump 2024” merchandise set up shop, according to the Associated Press. Trump on Saturday didn’t say whether he’s planning to mount a comeback, but his slew of upcoming public appearances—including a July 4 rally in Florida where he is “unattached to a midterm candidate,” the AP noted—signal his interest in returning to the spotlight.
“The endorsement rallies are vehicles for [Trump] to get attention when he’s been kicked off Twitter and Facebook, and has gone from having the most attention he ever had to having the least in decades,” the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman tweeted Saturday.
Trump’s return to the rally stage and upcoming string of public appearances also come as the wide-ranging investigation into his business dealings is ratcheting up. The Trump Organization could reportedly face criminal charges as soon as next week, a potential indictment over benefits the company provided to employees emerging from the Manhattan district attorney’s probe. Trump has decried it as a “witch hunt.”
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