I don’t know if I’m supposed to feel bad for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, or not.
I mean, let’s be honest about this thing: He jumped on the Trump train early, even after seeing Trump’s abusive, petty behavior towards his fellow candidates for the GOP nomination, and a host of laughably bad debate performances.
And no, if you went to a Drudge or Breitbart online poll and voted multiple times for Trump, even before the debate was finished, that doesn’t mean he won the debate. It means you voted multiple times (as did the Russian trolls).
You win when your answers are cogent and detail policy.
Donald Trump was a bad parody as a candidate. Not a single thing he said or did while running for the nomination proved him to have the qualifications to lead a nation.
He was several steps below the guy wearing a rubber boot on his head.
Sessions signed on to this disastrous candidacy, because he saw something in it for himself. He gave Trump legitimacy.
Now that Trump is in office and Sessions got the position in the Cabinet that he’d hoped for, I guess he’s reaping the whirlwind of his early betrayal of sound governance and decency, for the sake of political ambition.
To that point, President Trump took a hard hit at the attorney general on Tuesday.
Trump went into office with no clue what it is the attorney general does. He felt Sessions’ loyalty on the campaign trail would equate to a buffer between himself and any legal trouble his ignorance of our nation’s laws or the Constitution would bring to his doorstep.
“I don’t have an attorney general. It’s very sad,” Trump told Hill.TV in an extensive and freewheeling interview Tuesday from the Oval Office.
The problem?
Sessions stepped away from the Russia probe, out of an abundance of caution. His own pre-election contact with Russian officials became a problem, so he left his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, in charge of all things Russia related.
He could have easily related that contact to his work as a sitting senator, at the time.
Trump hasn’t been able to let that one go. No doubt, the ethics of the situation have been explained to him, but he’s a 72 year old man who has lived an unethical life. He has no respect for ethics, especially if they prevent him from having his way.
Sessions thought he was getting the attorney general spot, while he was expected to be Trump’s enforcer.
In going after Sessions, the president further suggested that it wasn’t just the Russia probe that he held against his attorney general.
“I’m not happy at the border, I’m not happy with numerous things, not just this,” he said.
“I’m so sad over Jeff Sessions because he came to me. He was the first senator that endorsed me. And he wanted to be attorney general, and I didn’t see it,” he said.
“And then he went through the nominating process and he did very poorly. I mean, he was mixed up and confused, and people that worked with him for, you know, a long time in the Senate were not nice to him, but he was giving very confusing answers. Answers that should have been easily answered. And that was a rough time for him.”
Yet, he was confirmed.
An FBI letter to a Sessions aide suggested that there was no real reason for Sessions to recuse himself.
“I recused myself not because of any asserted wrongdoing on my part during the campaign,” Sessions told the Senate Intelligence Committee last April. “But because a Department of Justice regulation, 28 CFR 45.2, required it.”
So he tried to do the right thing, as he perceived it to be, but he’d attached his name and reputation to a vile, petulant man-baby.
Jeff Sessions is a man with no friends.
South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham has gone so far as to suggest that Sessions should be removed, in order to put someone in whose first loyalty is to Donald Trump.
That should worry people, a lot.
“The president’s entitled to having an attorney general he has faith in, somebody that is qualified for the job, and I think there will come a time sooner rather than later where it will be time to have a new face and a fresh voice at the Department of Justice. Clearly, Attorney General Sessions doesn’t have the confidence of the president,” Graham said.
When the knives in Washington come out, they come out, don’t they?
Frankly, Graham is a hypocrite.
He wasn’t always so accepting of Trump.
You were right the first time, Senator.
So is Trump going to fire Sessions and get some sleazy “fixer” in to turn the nation away from a nation of laws and into a complete kakistocracy?
“We’ll see what happens. A lot of people have asked me to do that. And I guess I study history, and I say I just want to leave things alone, but it was very unfair what he did,” he said, referring to the recusal decision.
It’s not unfair. You sound like a child.
“And my worst enemies, I mean, people that, you know, are on the other side of me in a lot of ways, including politically, have said that was a very unfair thing he did.”
He concluded: “We’ll see how it goes with Jeff. I’m very disappointed in Jeff. Very disappointed.”
I’m sure he is disappointed.
He’s also getting desperate, as his recent moves have proven.
As special counsel Robert Mueller seems to be drawing the circle in tighter, the chance of exposing just how corrupt Trump may be draws closer to reality.
So make your moves, Mr. President. Maybe you’ll get lucky.
Or maybe we will.