Former Attorney General Bill Barr Compares Donald Trump to a 'Defiant 9-Year-Old Kid'

"Our country can't be a therapy session for ... a troubled man like this," the former attorney general said of Donald Trump on Face the Nation.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr compared Donald Trump to a "defiant" child in a Sunday interview, saying the former president is "a consummate narcissist" and "a very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country's."

Barr, 73, served as attorney general under Trump from 2019 to 2020 and resigned from his position following Joe Biden's presidential election win. He was interviewed on CBS News' Face the Nation about the former president's recent indictment by a federal grand jury for his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House.

Trump is accused of 37 criminal offenses: 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information (a violation of the Espionage Act); one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice; one count of withholding a document or record; one count of corruptly concealing a document or record; one count of concealing a document in a federal investigation; one count of scheme to conceal; and one count of false statements and representations.

The legal issues come as Trump — who pleaded not guilty to each count — is campaigning for president in 2024.

Related: The Trump Indictment Charges and Allegations: Full Recap

Speaking to Face the Nation, Barr questioned whether voters should be "putting someone like this forward as the leader of the country [and] leader of the free world."

"This is not just an isolated example," Barr said of the allegations laid out in the indictment. "Trump has — you know, has many good qualities, and he accomplished some good things. But the fact of the matter is, he is a consummate narcissist. And he constantly engages in reckless conduct that puts his political followers at risk and the conservative and Republican agenda at risk."

Asked how Trump might put the country at risk if he were to be elected president in 2024, Barr said, "He will always put his own interests and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country's interests. There's no question about it."

He continued: "This is a perfect example of that. He's like a 9-year-old, a defiant 9-year-old kid who is always pushing the glass toward the edge of the table, defying his parents to stop him from doing it. It's a means of self-assertion and exerting his dominance over other people. And he's a very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country's, his personal gratification of ... his ego."

"Our country can't ... be a therapy session for, you know, a troubled man like this," Barr added.

Related: Donald Trump Indictment Is Strong, Say Legal Experts: 'The Evidence Is Damning'

The recent indictment details how prosecutors say they have reviewed recordings of Trump bragging about classified documents and admitting that he didn't declassify them. As laid out in the indictment, investigators also have access to notes from at least one of Trump's own attorneys, who claimed the former president worked to hide classified documents from his own legal team, and from the FBI.

Asked about the strength of the indictment — specifically the charges of obstruction of justice — Barr said, "it's very strong, because a lot of the evidence comes from his own lawyers. And, furthermore, there's evidence of him saying things that are completely incompatible with any idea that this was an innocent document dispute."

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In a 2022 interview with Today ahead of the release of his memoir One Damn Thing After Another, Barr described Trump as "a man who, when he's told something he doesn't want to hear, he immediately throws a tantrum and attacks the person personally."

In response to those comments, Trump said the former attorney general had "no guts," and "no glory" in post on his social media site, Truth Social.

"[Barr] was a weak and pathetic RINO, who was so afraid of being Impeached that he became a captive to the Radical Left Democrats," Trump wrote.

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