Jeff Sessions is the most conservative member of the Trump administration. Trump doesn’t care.

Trump doesn’t want a champion of a particular brand of conservatism. He wants protection for himself.

By Jane Coastonjane.coaston@vox.com Sep 20, 2018, 1:10pm EDT




US Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivers remarks on the Trump administration’s anti-corruption efforts on December 4, 2017, in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesIn an interview with the Hill, President Donald Trump blasted Attorney General Jeff Sessions in perhaps the strongest terms he’s used yet, and not just for recusing himself from the investigation into the Trump presidential campaign’s ties with Russia.

During a freewheeling interview with the Hill’s John Solomon and Buck Sexton on Tuesday, Trump said that Sessions performed “very poorly” during his confirmation process and only squeaked by with one vote (which is untrue; he was confirmed by a 52-47 vote).

Trump went further, saying, “I don’t have an attorney general. It’s very sad,” adding that “my worst enemies, I mean, people that, you know, are on the other side of me, in a lot of ways including politically, have said that was a very unfair thing he did” in recusing himself. He concluded, “I’m very disappointed in Jeff. Very disappointed.”

This is a very strange position for Sessions, a man whose conservative bona fides — and right-leaning priorities — both in the Senate and as attorney general are unquestionable. He is perhaps the most visibly old-school conservative member of the Trump administration, harking back to what Jay Caruso, an editorial writer at the Dallas Morning News, told me was a “older, 1990s ‘tough on crime’ mentality.”

Others would call Sessions’s mentality racist and xenophobic. Sessions virulently opposed immigration reform throughout his Senate tenure, even saying in a floor speech in May 2006, “Fundamentally, almost no one coming from the Dominican Republic to the United States is coming because they have a skill that would benefit us and that would indicate their likely success in our society.” A state representative from Alabama described him as an “Eagle Scout” in 2013, adding, “He believes in the Constitution, and he believes in the rule of law.”

That’s exactly the problem. Trump doesn’t want an attorney general who believes in the Constitution, or an attorney general willing to hasten the deportation of victims of domestic violence seeking asylum — or even an attorney general who will fix the “inner cities” he believes are enmeshed in turmoil. (Sessions has repeatedly decried criminal justice reform efforts aimed at ending police misconduct, including praising the practice of civil asset forfeiture.)


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Instead, Trump wants a protector — for himself.

https://www.vox.com/2018/9/20/178786...mueller-lawyer