President Donald Trump said Wednesday night that demands by Democrats for Attorney General William Barr to resign over his actions involving the Robert Mueller report were “ridiculous.”
Trump called in to Trish Regan’s show on Fox Business Network, where she asked the president how he feels about Democrats seeking Barr’s resignation after his testimony at a heated Senate hearing earlier that day.
“Well, I haven’t even heard that. I mean, that’s so ridiculous,” he said during his third phone call with Fox in the last week. “He’s an outstanding legal mind, and I heard he was really ― he performed incredibly well today.”
Regan then mentioned Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who called for Barr’s resignation immediately after aggressively questioning him at the hearing. Trump responded, “Well, she was probably very nasty.”
Trump went on to talk about Harris, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), all three of whom are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and are running for president in 2020. The president told Regan that the three senators were “ranting like lunatics” while asking his attorney general appointee questions.
Barr is facing calls to resign from several Democrats who are concerned with the way the attorney general publicly presented the findings of Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The first major call Wednesday came from Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) during the hearing, where she characterized Barr as a liar who worked to protect Trump instead of objectively analyzing the special counsel’s report. Barr spent the hearing defending his initial summary of the findings.
Hours after the Senate hearing, the Justice Department announced that Barr will not show up Thursday for his long-awaited hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. Barr objected to the committee’s plan to have a staff attorney question him.