On Monday, the rhetoric in the contest for the Republican nomination in Alabama’s U.S. Senate race heated up as former Auburn head football coach Tommy Tuberville, a candidate for the GOP U.S. Senate nod, took some shots at his opponent former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
During an appearance on Huntsville radio’s WVNN, Tuberville weighed in on the response to the impeachment saga while out on the campaign trail and as to whether or not it was an important issue to voters.
Tuberville argued on “The Jeff Poor Show” that Sessions was one of the reasons for the impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, which is set to begin on Tuesday.
“You got one thing going on here — one of the guys that started all of this is running in this race, Jeff Sessions,” Tuberville said. “He’s the guy that stepped to the plate, or didn’t step to the plate, recused himself and turned all this impeachment stuff over to the bureaucrat lawyers in Washington, D.C. — the liberal left and turned it over to them. All it is has been a hornets’ nest. This is one of the reasons I got in. When Paul Ryan and Jeff Sessions turned on our president, I said, ‘Enough is enough. I’m going to try to do something.’”
“I don’t whether if I can get elected, but by golly, I’m going to run as an outsider and not as a career politician,” he continued. “I’m running to try to make a difference and try to help this president and try to help this state and country. I think people are looking at it, and if the guy would have done the right thing — if Jeff Sessions had done the right thing, this might not be a problem as it is today. Man, we have opened up a can of worms. I feel bad for the president. I really do.”
When asked what Sessions should have done, Tuberville argued he should have considered the precedent left behind by the Obama administration attorneys general.
“If you just go back and look at the previous president, Eric Holder — he stood up strong for President Obama,” he said. “He stood up strong. He fought it off. There’s many times a guy probably should have recused himself on some of that stuff they were involved in. And then you got Loretta Lynch. She did the same thing. She stood strong.”
“Coming out of the chute, we knew this was going to happen,” he added. “Jeff Sessions knew this was going to happen. He knew he was going to have to make a decision. So why in the world would you even take the position? Why would you even get involved in this if you know you’re going to recuse. He knew it going in. I mean, I’m sure he had his buddies telling him what to do, or this and that. At the end of the day, loyalty is what this country should be built on — not a lot of loyalty there.”
On the possibility of more involvement of Washington, D.C., both financially and organizationally, in the Senate race, as was the case 2017, Tuberville attributed Sessions’ entry into the contest to those efforts and touted his “outsider” credentials.
“What else would you expect?” Tuberville replied. “You know, I was doing pretty good in the polls. I was doing very well, as a matter of fact. And why do you think he got in? They don’t want me up there. I’m not swamp, OK? I’m not a career politician. I’ve actually had a job. I want to go up and help them solve the problems that I’ve seen because my goodness, we’ve got them.”
Immediately following his WVNN appearance, Tuberville’s campaign issued a statement echoing his earlier sentiments.
“In football, a player has to know that he can count on his teammates to watch his back, and a coach has to know that his players will play their hardest until the last second ticks. As attorney general, Jeff Sessions handed the ball to the other team and walked off the field the moment play started getting rough,” Tuberville said according to the statement. “As a result, history’s greatest president will face his darkest day tomorrow as liberal Democrats looking to turn our country socialist argue for his removal from office in a bogus impeachment trial.”
“If Jeff Sessions had stood up and fought instead of letting a bunch of anti-Trump attorneys in the Justice Department bully him into recusal, the Democrats’ persistent persecution of the president could have been stopped a long time ago,” he continued. “It is time for Alabama to elect a senator who will support President Trump, guard his flank, and fight the socialist mob that wants to run him out of Washington. Jeff Sessions had his chance, and he fumbled the ball because he doesn’t know the difference between ‘won’t back down’ and ‘cut and run.’ It is time to elect a senator who knows how to win.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University, the editor of Breitbart TV and host of “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN in Huntsville.
