Journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa claim that former Attorney General Bill Barr last year gave former President Donald Trump a brutally honest -- and profane -- analysis of why he was going to lose the 2020 presidential election.
Business Insider, which has obtained a copy of the reporters' new book "Peril," reports that Barr told Trump that he would not win the election if he kept alienating suburban voters that Republicans have traditionally relied upon to win national elections.
"There are a lot of people out there, independents and Republicans in the suburbs of the critical states that think you're an assh*le," Barr told him, according to Woodward and Costa. "They think you act like an assh*le and you got to, you got to start taking that into account."
Trump would also regularly berate Barr and tell him that he wanted to see prosecutions of his "deep state" enemies such as former FBI Director James Comey ahead of the election, but Barr told him that wouldn't be enough to drag him over the finish line.
"Your base cares about seeing [Comey] and the rest of those guys held accountable, but these other people don't," Barr said. "They don't care about your f*cking grievances. And it just seems that every time you're out there, you're talking about your goddamn grievances."
Trump refused to back down, however, and told Barr that his base loved him because he was a "fighter."