For Trump and Sessions, loyalty runs in one direction
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been nothing if not loyal to President Trump. As a longtime senator from Alabama, he was one of Trump’s earliest and most pivotal backers. As attorney general, he has enforced Trump’s hard-right policies on immigration, mandatory sentencing, intelligence leaks and more.
Yet his future is far from clear. Trump has not committed to keeping him. Now there is speculation, which Kellyanne Conway conspicuously failed to tamp down on Fox News Sunday, that Sessions could be moved to the Department of Homeland Security to succeed Secretary John Kelly, Trump’s new chief of staff. Will Sessions be forced into a lateral move? Forced out? Or left in place to endure Trump’s constant undermining until he gives up and resigns?
Trump’s daily fusillades against Sessions have been bizarre in the extreme, even by the standards of this White House. For one, the efforts to demean Sessions are politically self-destructive. To much of the Republican base, Sessions is a hero for his positions and hostility to East Coast elites.
Sessions also remains popular with many of his former Senate colleagues, who are aghast at the attacks and might be less willing to support Trump on health care and other hot-button issues.
More important, Trump’s behavior toward the nation’s top law enforcement officer — hanging him out to twist in the wind — is wildly inappropriate for a president.
His tweet asking why Sessions had not launched an investigation of Hillary Clinton would be unworthy of a banana republic. It was also strange, given how Trump long ago agreed to abandon the “lock her up” nonsense that he used in his campaign.
Moreover, how is Trump going to attract competent people to serve in his administration if he undercuts or abandons them? And how is he going to win over skeptical judges, foreign allies and lawmakers, not to mention most Americans, if he repeatedly interferes in law enforcement matters?
Earlier this year, Trump rashly fired FBI Director James Comey, who at the time was overseeing an investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and any possible ties to the Trump campaign.
Now Trump has apparently set his sights on special counsel Robert Mueller, who took over the Russian investigation. Trump can’t order Sessions to fire Mueller because Sessions — appropriately — has recused himself on all matters regarding Russia. And Trump can’t get Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to do it either because Rosenstein, a career prosecutor and Justice Department lawyer, has too much integrity.
All of this is deeply disturbing and raises the question: Why is Trump so obsessed with the Russia probe that he would undermine his own ability to govern?
The attorney general should not allow himself to be bullied by Trump. The Sessions saga shows the lengths to which the president will go to humiliate even the most loyal of allies.
It also provides further confirmation that for this president, loyalty is a concept that runs in one direction.