Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday he was a member of the political resistance against President Trump.
“There’s no question about that,” Holder told CNN. “You know, I’m a progressive Democrat committed to the ideals of my party and proud of the work that I did as attorney general.”
Holder, who headed the Department of Justice from 2009 to 2015, admitted it’s been “difficult” to watch Attorney General Jeff Sessions dismantle some of his policies that he thought made the U.S. “better, more fair, more just.”
“At the same time, I’ve tried to be respectful and only when certain lines have been crossed have I raised my voice,” Holder said. “But yeah, it’s been a difficult thing to watch and it means that I think I have to be a part of the resistance and to try to save as much of the great work I think that we did as is possible and to try to ensure that we put in place leadership in 2018, in 2020, that will be supportive of the positive things that we did.”
Holder was also one of the Obama administration’s alumni who defended the former president’s outreach to military families grieving loved ones after Trump claimed Obama “didn’t often” call them.
Holder on Tuesday implored Trump on social media to “stop the damn lying.”
Stop the damn lying – you’re the President. I went to Dover AFB with 44 and saw him comfort the families of both the fallen military & DEA. pic.twitter.com/HhE4KbTBkJ
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) October 17, 2017
“That made me mad in a way that few other things have and that’s why I was as direct in that tweet as I was,” Holder said of Trump’s comments. “And I would tell him, you know, I would tell the president the same thing and in the same language that I used in that tweet.”
