Barr is Cheney 2.0. He is CIA from way back. His father was OSS. His father hired Jeffrey Epstein to be a math teacher at the Dalton School. Barr was Attorney General when Bush I gave Christmas eve pardons to Elliott Abrams and others after Bush I was voted out of office in 1992.
Barr was brought into the Trump administration about the same time as Elliott Abrams. He basically declared that based on his reading of the Mueller report that there was no obstruction of justice. So Barr basically got to decide if Trump stays or goes.
Barr will provide legal and political cover for Trump who simply deals in symbolism and narrow self interest. If Barr wants to that is. He is incredibly slick and will triangulate. It will be in his interest to appear to uphold the law. This shows the limits of the current protests.
I argued along these lines in “How #AllLivesMatter and #BlackLivesMatter Can Devalue Life” in 2015.
The question about these protests is: Are they motivated by the racism or by the nationality? That is, do people recognize Floyd humanity because it’s there and they are repelled by the racism or because he is a USian? Or because major media cover it — and they have ulterior motives as well. If it is because he is a USian, the current dynaics may effectively backup U.S. Empire. I argued along these lines in “How #AllLivesMatter and #BlackLivesMatter Can Devalue Life” in 2015.
Barr and others are also talking about “foreign actors” — so this becomes an exercise in allegedly exalting lives because they are USian (selectively) and an exercise in xenophobia that can demonize protest and whatever country Barr and company want to.
Barr noted in his remarks Thursday that he was AG during the LA protests in 1992 following the acquittal of the police who beat Rodney King. So, the same crew is basically in charge. They have no interest in fixing any problem, only in gaming it for purposes of Empire. Trump is a prop to Barr.
Trump has served them by increasing military and other spending, he has used sanctions and other mechanisms to attack Iran and Venezuela. He has backed escalating Israeli expansionism, Saudi slaughter in Yemen and continued U.S. wars. And he has ripped up treaty after treaty.
They want more. They want more war. They used Russiagate as a possible threat to Trump. If Trump had acted on his isolationist rhetoric, they would have almost certainly turned on him and backed impeachment and removal. They will now use other things. The “law” is a tool of power to Barr.
They could care less about Trump’s racism and will use whatever they can to keep him in line on the Empire project. I never thought Trump would deviate from it, but Trump is a compulsive liar and these people are not fools. They need to have leverage over him because he turns on partners.
And the first question after his statement on Thursday came from from Pete Williams of NBC. In 1986, Williams became press secretary for then Rep. Dick Cheney and followed Cheney to DOD, becoming Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs in 1989 during Bush I. Complete clique.
Barr talks about a “witches’ brew” of people and groups involved in protests. He and his associates are the genuinely toxic witches’ brew which has been at work for years and has only gained in its toxicity.