Attorney General Bill Barr said he expected criticism for his decisions surrounding the public release of the Mueller report and that he ultimately does not regret taking the job during an interview Friday with "CBS This Morning."
What he's saying:
"I realize we live in a crazy hyper-partisan period of time and I knew that it would only be a matter of time, if I was behaving responsibly and calling them as I see them, that I'd be attacked because nowadays people don't care about the merits or the substance. They only care about who it helps, who benefits, whether my side benefits or the other side benefits, everything is gauged by politics.
"And as I say that's antithetical to the way the department runs and any attorney general in this period is going to end up losing a lot of political capital and I realize that and that's one of the reasons that I ultimately was persuaded that I should take it on because I think at my stage in life, it really doesn't make any difference.
"I'm at the end of my career. ... Everyone dies and I am not — I don't believe in the Homeric idea that immortality comes by having odes sung about you over the centuries, you know?"
"People are saying that it's President Trump who's shredding our institutions. I really see no evidence of that. From my perspective, the idea of resisting a democratically elected president ... that's where the shredding of our norms and institutions is occurring."
Go deeper: White House sent Barr a letter blasting Mueller report as political
