Trump warms to Jeff Sessions following stinging public criticism

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump had some warm words for Attorney General Jeff Sessions after weeks of publicly slamming him as weak.

“After many years of LEAKS going on in Washington, it is great to see the AG taking action! For National Security, the tougher the better!” Trump wrote on Twitter from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Sessions had been the public target of the president’s anger recently because he had recused himself from a probe into allegations that Trump’s aides coordinated with Russia to tilt last year’s election in his favour.

At one point, Trump told The New York Times he would never have appointed Sessions had he known he would recuse himself. Trump also took to Twitter to blast Sessions as ‘VERY weak,’ among other criticisms on social media.

The attacks were widely seen as designed to force Sessions into resigning.

However, the former Alabama senator appeared to be on Trump’s good side after launching a highprofile campaign to crack down on government employees who leak classified or sensitive information to the media.

The action comes after a spate of scoops – many of them unfavourable – about the Trump administration.

“I strongly agree with the president and condemn in the strongest terms the staggering number of leaks undermining the ability of our government to protect this country,” Sessions told a press conference.

Trump, who once asked ‘what’s the point’ of vacations and often admonished his presidential predecessor Barack Obama for taking them while in office, also pushed back on reports that his 17day stay at his beloved Bedminster resort was a holiday.

“Working in Bedminster, NJ, as long planned construction is being done at the White House. This is not a vacation – meetings and calls!” he tweeted. — AFP