(Opinion) President Donald Trump has unfairly and rudely attacked … yet again … the most consistent, most honorable, and most trustworthy conservative in the country – Alabama’s Jeff Sessions.
Here’s what just happened:
The president didn’t like that our attorney general directed the Justice Department’s inspector general to review how the agency seeks surveillance orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (an entirely appropriate action, by the way). The White House wanted something else done, it seems.
So what does the president do?
He launches another Twitter broadside Wednesday against one of his only cabinet members who’s actually implementing the conservative policies Trump was elected to pursue.
We have “Good Trump,” as writer Ben Shapiro says to explain the shifting positive and negative whims of the president, and then we have “Bad Trump.”
This, my friends, is definitely Bad Trump.
Listen, before any trolls go calling me some unhinged #NeverTrumper, know that I just delivered a speech in Birmingham praising the president’s largely conservative record of achievement.
But this right here is contemptible:
Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 28, 2018
Sessions, ever the gentlemen and refusing to be hauled down into the Twitter gutter, issued a statement Wednesday saying that his department “initiated the appropriate process that will ensure complaints against this department will be fully and fairly acted upon if necessary.”
“As long as I am the attorney general,” Sessions said, “I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and constitution.”
Sessions knows the law.
Sessions knows the constitution.
He knows what the law and the constitution demand of our attorney general – the top law enforcement officer in our land and NOT the president’s personal attorney.
Whatever Sessions decides is the right thing to do, we conservatives owe it to the man to support him (well, except for that whole asset forfeiture thing).
Let’s hope Sessions weathers this storm and that it quickly passes. We need him there.
Meanwhile, they say Trump demands loyalty.
Somebody should tell him that’s a two-way street before he’s left with nobody but swamp critters lurking around the White House.
J. Pepper Bryars is the editor of Yellowhammer News and the author of “American Warfighter.”