After U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren called for the resignation of U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday, President Donald Trump accused Warren of “defrauding the public” with her claims of American Indian ancestry and said she should resign.
Trump, calling in to a local conservative talk radio show, also suggested that Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins and Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan “don’t mind crime” if they think immigration agents should be barred from courthouses.
Trump phoned into Boston Herald Radio’s “Talk It Up” show hosted by Adriana Cohen and Boston Herald editorial page editor Tom Shattuck, and spent about 20 minutes discussing the Mueller report, Barr’s testimony to Congress, and the 2020 race.
“I heard that the attorney general was really, really solid and did a great job today,” Trump said.
His support for his attorney general came after Barr appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the Mueller report following reports that special counsel Robert Mueller had written to the attorney general in March taking issue with how Barr had characterized the report in a four-page public memo.
“AG Barr is a disgrace, and his alarming efforts to suppress the Mueller report show that he’s not a credible head of federal law enforcement. He should resign — and based on the actual facts in the Mueller report, Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against the President,” Warren said on Twitter.
Asked about Warren, Trump brought up allegations that Warren used false claims of Native American ancestry to advance her career. Her former bosses at Harvard University and elsewhere have disputed that narrative.
“I think it’s ridiculous. Look, she defrauded the public for a long time and she should really be the one to resign, hence the name Pocahontas,” Trump said.
“She has gone through colleges and gotten jobs and gotten in all because she supposedly had Indian blood and then it turned out that wasn’t true. So she’s defrauded the public, she’s defrauded the college and I guess other places of work and she should be the last one to be talking,” he continued.
Cohen also asked the president about the lawsuit filed this week by Rollins and Ryan against the federal government seeking to make it illegal for ICE agents to arrest people while they are coming to, attending, or returning from court.
The lawsuit was filed after U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling, a Trump appointee, brought charges against a district court judge for allegedly helping an immigrant defendant evade immigration agents in her courthouse.
Trump was told by the show hosts that on the same day the lawsuit was filed two gang members in the country illegally had been arrested inside two different Suffolk County courthouses.
“I think it’s a sad situation and very unfortunate for Massachusetts, a great place that I know very well, so many friends up there. These are people that probably don’t mind crime. They don’t mind what’s going on,” Trump said.
Trump said his administration has been working hard to arrest dangerous criminals entering the country illegally, many of them, he said, with ties to violent gangs. He called ICE agents “heroes.”
“For her to be saying that, she’s got to live with it. She’s got to live with her own conscience,” Trump said, seemingly referring to one of the two prosecutors who filed the lawsuit.
“It’s hard to believe that a big community like you have, that we all know very well, would want these people living there, in some cases,” he said.
Both Ryan and Rollins declined, through their spokesmen, to comment on Trump’s criticisms, but the district attorneys earlier this week said that the presence of ICE agents in courthouses was making it difficult for prosecutors to do their jobs because some defendants, witnesses, and victims were afraid to appear in court.
While Trump said Warren’s campaign was “not doing very well,” he would not say whether he’d rather campaign against former Vice President Joe Biden or Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who were the two leading Democrats in a Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll out this week measuring early support in the New Hampshire primary.
“Well, he’s a sleepy man, but I just don’t know,” Trump said, referring to Biden. “Who knows really who can do the best. He’s not as smart as Bernie. Not as quick.”
Trump did note the attention that Biden’s endorsement from the International Association of Fire Fighters had received, but dismissed union leaders as “dues sucking people.” Ed Kelly, a Dorchester native, is the current secretary-treasurer of the IAFF.
“The firefighters are going to be voting for me,” Trump said.
A number of firefighters wearing T-shirts urging Biden to run for president turned out two weeks ago when Biden came to Boston to support striking Stop & Shop workers.
