Former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr called former President Donald Trump‘s verbal communication skills “limited,” at The University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics on Friday.
When CBS correspondent Jan Crawford asked Barr whether Trump was “losing it,” Barr replied that Trump is “not very disciplined with what he says.”
This prompted laughs from the audience.
Barr continued, “If you get him away from ‘very, very, very,’ you know, the adjectives … they’re unfamiliar to him and they spill out, and he goes too far.”
Barr served as Trump’s A.G. for two years. He resigned in December 2020 when Trump claimed without evidence that the presidential election was stolen. Barr, who oversaw the Department of Justice, asserted that there was no basis for the claim of widespread voter fraud.
Since then, he has become one of the most prominent and vocal members of Trump’s former administration to speak out against his former boss.
On Sunday night, Trump responded to Barr’s comments via a rant to Truth Social wherein he labeled Barr “Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy,” and “a RINO [Republican In Name Only] WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB.”
“I was tough on him in the White House, for good reason, so now this Moron says about me, to get even, ‘his verbal skills are limited,’” Trump continued. “Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before. Tell that to the biggest political crowds in the history of politics, by far. Bill Barr is a LOSER!”
Trump’s limited vocabulary has been a topic of conversation before and was frequently discussed in the first campaign.
Sharon Begley, the former senior writer on science and discovery for the website STAT, wrote about a study the site did in 2017 that showed Trump was previously much more articulate and his vocabulary is in a state of deterioration.
Begley wrote, “Research has shown that changes in speaking style can result from cognitive decline. STAT therefore asked experts in neurolinguistics and cognitive assessment, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists, to compare Trump’s speech from decades ago to that in 2017; they all agreed there had been a deterioration, and some said it could reflect changes in the health of Trump’s brain.”
Trump has had a string of legal defeats lately that may also be disturbing him. In a speech last week, he compared himself to the late South African President Nelson Mandela.
