President Donald Trump on Thursday said that his “life would’ve been a lot easier” had he chosen William Barr over Jeff Sessions as his attorney general from the start, but that the move could have threatened his popularity among supporters.

“My life would’ve been a lot easier, but I might have been less popular,” Trump said in an interview on Geraldo Rivera’s podcast when asked what his life would be like if he had picked Barr over Sessions. “Because (my supporters) say they like that that I fought it. They like that I won. They like that my base is much more energized.”


The former attorney general, who as a senator from Alabama was one of the first sitting members of Congress to endorse Trump in the presidential primary, quickly went from one of the president’s champions to one of his greatest foes after recusing himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The deputy attorney general at the time, Rod Rosenstein, assumed oversight and appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate.