Insider: “Attorney General Bill Barr took a blunt approach with President Donald Trump in April 2020 while discussing his reelection chances. The crux of the problem, Barr told Trump, was that most suburban Republican voters ‘just think you’re a fucking asshole.’ That’s according to a new book by authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. Insider obtained an early copy of ‘Peril,’ which is set to be released next week. ‘In my opinion,’ Barr told Trump during a tense Oval Office meeting, according to the book, ‘this is not a base election. Your base is critical, and you’ll get it out.'”

“‘And there are a lot of people out there, independents and Republicans in the suburbs of the critical states that think you’re an asshole. They think you act like an asshole and you got to, you got to start taking that into account.’ The attorney general went on to tell the president that he had become a Beltway ‘captive’ and needed to appeal to a broader group of voters than just his diehard base, the book said. Barr is said to have debated how best to approach the conversation with Trump last year, while the US was grappling with a deadly and widespread pandemic and as the president refused to acknowledge the reality of the threat. Barr reportedly addressed those frustrations, telling Trump that suburban Republican voters ‘don’t give a shit’ about Trump’s vendetta against his perceived foes. ‘Your base cares about seeing [former FBI director James Comey] and the rest of those guys held accountable, but these other people don’t,’ Barr said, according to the book. “They don’t care about your fucking grievances. And it just seems that every time you’re out there, you’re talking about your goddamn grievances.”