Defiant Trump goads AG to quit
UNITED STATES: President Donald Trump appeared to be goading his attorney-general into quitting on Tuesday as he escalated an extraordinary series of attacks on Jeff Sessions, his oldest political ally.
During an early morning Twitter tirade, Trump said: ‘‘Attorneygeneral Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes (where are E-mails & DNC server) & Intel leakers!’’
In another tweet, Trump suggested that Ukraine had sought to ‘‘sabotage’’ his presidential campaign by feeding compromising information to allies of Clinton – ‘‘So where is the investigation AG’’.
Trump’s use of social media was not new but his rebukes of Sessions, a hero among the antiestablishment fringe of the Republican Party, have been remarkable by any standard. The president’s anger at the attorney-general’s decision in March to step away from overseeing investigations into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin boiled over last week.
The two men are immigration hard-liners who bonded over their shared populist instincts. Last week, however, Trump suggested to The New York Times that he regretted appointing the former Alabama senator. ‘‘Sessions should have never [have removed himself from the inquiry] and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,’’ Trump said. A second public dressing down followed on Monday when Trump described Sessions as ‘‘beleaguered’’.
The attacks were all the more striking given that Sessions was the first senator to back Trump, endorsing him when his presidential campaign was still widely seen as doomed to fail.
Legal experts say that Sessions, who as attorney-general leads the Department of Justice and is America’s top law enforcement official, had little choice but to remove himself from the investigations into Russia’s alleged meddling in the US election. He had been part of the Trump campaign and therefore had a conflict of interest.
Trump appears to blame the attorney-general for how the Russia investigation has gathered pace and scope. Sessions’s decision to remove himself paved the way for the deputy attorney-general, Rod Rosenstein, to appoint a special counsel to investigate the Russia affair, an inquiry that in recent days has begun to home in on members of the Trump family and their labyrinthine business dealings.
White House aides increased the speculation about Sessions’s future. Anthony Scaramucci, the newly installed White House communications director, was asked whether it was correct that Trump ‘‘wants [ Sessions] gone’’. He answered: ‘‘If there’s this level of tension in the relationship that’s public – you’re probably right.’’
He also outlined his strategy to stop White House press leaks. If necessary, he would ‘‘fire everybody’’, he said.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the newly promoted White House press secretary, poured more petrol on the flames. ‘‘Does [Trump] want the attorney-general to go?’’ she was asked on Fox News. ‘‘Look, I know that he is frustrated and certainly disappointed in the attorney-general. That frustration certainly hasn’t gone away, and I don’t think it will,’’ she said.
Ted Cruz, the conservative Texas senator, and Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, were mentioned as replacements but both suggested they were not interested, an indication perhaps of a widespread trepidation of following in Sessions’ footsteps.
Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator, slammed Trump’s call for Sessions to pursue a case against Clinton, suggesting that targeting a former political foe was un-American. ‘‘Jeff understands that we are a nation of laws, not men,’’ Graham said.
Trump has reportedly speculated aloud to allies about the potential consequences of sacking Sessions. The president could appoint a successor during the next congressional recess, sidestepping the need for Senate confirmation. That person could potentially serve until January 2019 and take control of the Russia inquiry. Trump could order them to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading the investigation. The political blowback, though, would be fierce.
Trump’s flurry of tweets diverted attention from Tuesday’s other big event in Washington, a Republican effort to formally start debate in the Senate on plans to reform healthcare.
John McCain, the senator who revealed last week that he has an aggressive type of brain cancer, returned to the capital from his home in Arizona to take part. Trump welcomed his return. ‘‘So great that John McCain is coming back to vote. Brave – American hero! Thank you John.’’
The tweet stood in contrast to Trump’s claim during his presidential campaign that McCain was not a hero, despite the senator having spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
Even with McCain present, there were enough wavering Republicans to put the future of the party’s seven-year crusade to overturn the Affordable Healthcare Act, which has been dubbed Obamacare, in doubt. In fact, it took a tie-breaking vote from vicepresident Mike Pence to split a 50-50 tied vote.
That vote allowed the Senate to open debate on a bill to repeal Obamacare, but the party’s effort to roll back President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law still faces significant hurdles.
The outcome was a huge relief for Trump, who had pushed his fellow Republicans hard in recent days to live up to the party’s campaign promises to repeal the 2010 act, commonly known as Obamacare.
But the narrow victory on a simple procedural matter raised questions about whether Republicans can muster the votes necessary to pass any of the repeal approaches the Senate will consider. The Times