Attorney General Jeff Sessions is officially out of grace with President Trump.
In an interview with The New York Times this week, Trump attacked his attorney general for recusing himself from the Russia investigation and said he has not forgiven him for the decision.
“Sessions should have never recused himself 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,” the president told the Times. (RELATED: Trump Blasts Sessions For ‘Unfair’ Russia Recusal — ‘Would Have Picked Somebody Else’)
This public declaration of distrust in Sessions convinced many pro-Trump pundits that the current attorney general was no longer the right man for the job.
Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other prominent Trump supporters bashed Sessions after Trump’s Times interview was published. This sudden burst of negativity towards the former Alabama senator could be seen as the president testing the waters for a dramatic shake-up of his cabinet — one that would quickly end Sessions’s tenure at the Department of Justice. (RELATED: Pro-Trump Voices Lay The Groundwork For Trump To Clean House At DOJ)
But that would be a terrible move for Trump and the agenda he ran on.
Sessions was pushing Trump’s ideas long before the New York billionaire announced his run for president — and, many times, he was the only Republican willing to articulate those views.
On immigration, there was no greater hawk on the matter then Jeff Sessions.
He fought against both recently proposed amnesties that came before the Senate in 2007 and 2013, respectively. The then-senator repeatedly insisted that rewarding illegal immigration was bad for the American people and bad for a nation built on the rule of law.
And Sessions did not just limit his criticism to illegal immigration — he also called for restricting legal immigration when no other Republican would touch the subject.
Sessions bucked the GOP consensus on trade and fiercely fought against the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He warned that these trade agreements undermined American sovereignty and were terrible deals — sentiments that were later echoed by Trump on the campaign trail.
As senator, he assailed the elites who pushed policies that were antithetical to the interests of the American people. In 2014, he mockingly dubbed these elites as “the masters of the universe” who seek to have a country with open borders while nestled safely in their gated communities.
The anti-establishment rhetoric is remarkably similar to the rebellious spirit Trump appealed to in his bid for the White House.
It makes sense that Trump’s chief speech writer and policy adviser Stephen Miller worked for Sessions when the former senator was the only big name politician articulating this nationalist message.
More importantly for a president who values loyalty above all else, Sessions was the only Republican lawmaker who was willing to associate with Trump in the early days of the primary. While the entire party and nearly every conservative pundit was wailing over Trump in the summer of 2015, Sessions held a massive rally for the eventual nominee in Mobile, Alabama.
He also became the first senator and only third member of Congress to endorse Trump for president. Many observers saw this as a disastrous career move for Sessions that would haunt him for life. Continually wrong political strategist Rick Wilson even said that the well-respected senator would be reduced to essentially shining Trump’s shoes as a reward for his endorsement.
There were serious risks and few rewards for backing Trump at such a stage, but Sessions did it anyway because he believed in the Trumpist platform. Unlike many of the folks within Trump’s circle and those who now serve him as cabinet secretaries, Sessions is loyal to the ideas and principles of Trumpism — not just to the man himself.
When Rick Perry and Nikki Haley were saying Trump’s ideas were a “cancer to conservatism” and un-American, Sessions stood up for them.
It might have been a serious mistake for the attorney general to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, but that was not the catalyst for President Trump’s present woes. What was a bigger, and unnecessary, factor for kickstarting Russia hysteria into overdrive was the president firing James Comey as FBI director.
Arguably there would be no special prosecutor if that had not occurred and the Russia story would have died down. Now, it’s the Trump administration’s primary concern, and there is nothing Sessions can do about it.
Regardless of your view of Sessions’s recusal, removing him from office won’t change Trump’s Russia headaches one damn bit. There’s hardly any chance the president could get the Senate to confirm an unquestioning loyalist who will squelch the probe into Russian election meddling.
Moreover, Sessions is one of the few cabinet secretaries who is successfully pushing Trump’s agenda through the agency he runs.
Attorney General Sessions has strongly pushed immigration enforcement, backed tough law enforcement measures, supported voter ID laws and eliminated the DOJ’s slush fund for left-wing groups. There is no reason these efforts should warrant a dismissal over a decision that has spiraled out of his control.
Throughout the campaign, Trump said he was creating a movement to make America great again. But in order for this movement to survive, it needs to be more than a personality cult. It needs figures who are dedicated to the nationalist agenda the president ran on and are willing to carry it on, no matter what happens with Trump’s presidency.
Firing Sessions would be a devastating development for the viability of a Trumpist movement and make it more likely it will die when Trump exits the White House.
Follow Scott on Twitter and purchase his new book, “No Campus for White Men.”
