Trump’s anti-Sessions tweets dismay Alabama’s Republicans
MONTGOMERY, ALA. » President Donald Trump finds some of his strongest support in blood-red Alabama, but his public flogging of Attorney General Jeff Sessions is dismaying Republicans who consider the conservative stalwart to be a home state hero.
Trump’s near-daily Twitter humiliations of Sessions, an apparent effort to force him to quit, is putting party members in awkward positions. With only weeks left before a special primary election for the U.S. Senate seat Sessions vacated to become the nation’s top law enforcer, the harmony of simultaneous cheers for the president and Alabama’s native son is sounding off-key.
“You just don’t treat people like this,” Joe Akin, a 79-year-old engineer and Trump voter in Birmingham, said after turning off his TV in frustration.
“If you want to have a discussion with someone, you do it across the conference table, you don’t get on Facebook or whatever,” Akin said. “There’s an awful lot of things I like about Trump, but he’s got to learn he’s not running his own business.”
Sessions was the first leading elected Republican to endorse Trump’s candidacy, and became one of his most loyal supporters. But Trump’s view of him changed after Sessions belatedly admitted to meeting with Russia’s ambassador during the campaign and recused himself from the intensifying federal investigation into election meddling.
On Twitter, Trump called Sessions “beleaguered,” accused him of having a “VERY WEAK position on Hillary Clinton crimes,” and alleged that he’s ignoring conflicts of interest in the Justice Department. Asked whether he intends to fire Sessions or push him to resign, the president told a reporter that “time will tell.”
Sessions was at the White House Wednesday as Trump sent one of those tweets, but didn’t meet with the president. Trump is “obviously disappointed” with his attorney general, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, waving away other questions.
All three GOP candidates in the Aug. 15 Senate primary have competed to show voters just how much like Trump they can be. But U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks on Wednesday said supporting Sessions now “is the right thing for Alabama and America.”
“I support President Trump’s policies, but this public waterboarding of one of the greatest people Alabama has ever produced is inappropriate and insulting to the people of Alabama who know Jeff Sessions so well and elected him so often by overwhelming margins,” Brooks said.
Brooks even offered to step aside and encouraged his rivals — Sen. Luther Strange, who now holds the seat by appointment, and former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore — to step aside as well to enable Sessions to return to the Senate.
Others were more cautious, praising Sessions but saying little about Trump in a state where his presidency has been highly popular.
Strange blamed the media.
“Jeff and President Trump are trying to make America great again, and it’s a privilege to work alongside both to accomplish the Trump agenda for the American people, and we need to stop letting the media distract us from that agenda,” he said.