Warren following Trump’s example
While we can all hope that the political climate has hit its boiling point and can finally begin to cool down, early signs are not favorable. Politicians, especially those seeking higher office, are feeding the flames of discord with cynical rhetoric, even contradicting themselves without care.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren loudly called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign last year. As the Herald’s Mary Markos noted, Warren accused Sessions of violating the terms of his recusal from the Russia investigation in a tweetstorm from June 13, 2017.
Among at least a half-dozen tweets, Warren wrote: “As our top law enforcement officer, the AG must be truthful and uphold the law. Sessions cannot continue to serve. He should resign.”
But last Thursday after President Trump asked for and received Sessions’ resignation, Warren was beside herself. She took to Twitter, declaring “@realDonaldTrump’s firing of Jeff Sessions brings us one step closer to a constitutional crisis. Congress must act to ensure that Special Counsel Mueller can do his job without interference.”
During a lively press conference she told reporters that Trump is trying to “foam the runway” by firing the attorney general. “It seems pretty obvious to me, Jeff Sessions has been with Donald Trump on every single issue except the fact that Sessions has protected the special prosecutor in a time when Donald Trump is under investigation and obviously doesn’t like that,” Warren said yesterday.
So which one is it? Presumably, if Sessions had resigned back when she wanted him to, he wouldn’t have been around to protect the Mueller investigation. But in modern politics words are just bait to cast into the news cycle in hopes that you’ll get a nibble.
Donald Trump perfected the art last time around and Liz Warren learned from it as she’s looking to face him in the 2020 contest. At her campaign headquarters in Dorchester, Warren doubled down on her promise to “take a hard look” at running for the White House in 2020 now that the midterms are over.
“I said I would take a hard look and I will,” Warren said, adding that she does not have a timeline on the decision.
Elizabeth Warren did not invent the political playbook and she’s not the first to use it. It’s been pressed into action for centuries in American politics, but at a time like now, a little less political opportunism would mean sowing a little less division so perhaps the country could begin to come together.