WASHINGTON – With winner-take-all primary elections set to take place on Tuesday in several large states, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) believes it is time for Republicans to unite behind Donald J. Trump as the GOP frontrunner steamrolls toward the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the party’s presidential nomination.
Sessions endorsed Trump at a massive Alabama rally several weeks ago, the first time the Alabama senator has officially thrown his support behind any presidential contender. He was subsequently named chairman of Trump’s National Security Advisory Committee.
“At Thursday night’s debate, there was a crucial conversation about whether America’s trade and immigration policies ought to serve the people’s interests or the special interests,” Sessions said in a statement released by the Trump campaign. “Mr. Trump spoke with clarity and conviction about the need to reform our guest worker and immigration programs to protect American workers.”
Sessions reaffirming his support for Mr. Trump and his immigration policies is an important boost for the the billionaire real estate mogul after he said in the previous debate that he was “softening” his immigration stance, which prompted accusations of flip-flopping.
“He also stood alone in his consistent opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and foreign currency manipulation,” Sessions said of Trump. “The TPP will hammer the automobile industry in Ohio and American workers nationwide. This determination to protect American workers from reckless trade and immigration policies will grow the Republican party and position us to win in November. Hillary Clinton has embraced a radical and extreme open borders agenda that, properly exposed, will make her un-electable. Combined with Clinton’s praise for the TPP, we are in a prime position to draw millions of new Democrat and Independent voters into the Republican Party. Now is the time for the GOP to embrace this opportunity to win working Americans on a platform of rising wages, American jobs, and the national interest.”
Sessions’ unity call comes on the heels of semi-secretive GOP leadership meetings that included conversations about how to deny Trump the nomination.
The Washington Post reported that one of the gatherings took place during a Republican Governors Association meeting in Utah. A slide show was reportedly shown during the event that showed how Trump could be held below the 1,237 delegate threshold needed to win the nomination.
“It’s one thing if [Trump] goes to the convention and he’s got 48 percent, 49 percent of the delegates,” Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam said in response to the presentation. “Then it’s a hard thing to see if there’s a convention floor battle. But if he goes to the convention and he’s got 35 or 40 percent, that’s a whole different thing.”
A second meeting reportedly took place at an American Enterprise Institute meeting in Georgia that was attended by Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla Motors and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Google founder Larry Page, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, among others.
Although the meeting was off the record, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard was in attendance and summed up the conversations.
“The key task now, to once again paraphrase Karl Marx, is less to understand Trump than to stop him,” said Kristol. “In general, there’s a little too much hand-wringing, brow-furrowing, and fatalism out there and not quite enough resolving to save the party from nominating or the country electing someone who simply shouldn’t be president.”
Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina are set to hold their primaries on Tuesday, March 15th.
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