Rich Lowry uses a New York Post column to probe the president’s attack on his attorney general.
Jeff Sessions thought he was on the Trump team, but he was sadly mistaken.
For President Trump, the world breaks down into three categories — there’s family, who are part of the charmed Trump circle by blood or marriage; there are “winners,” who have earned Trump’s regard by making lots of money (often at Goldman Sachs); and then there’s everyone else, who are adornments to be cast aside as Trump finds convenient.
Sessions is emphatically in the latter category. If the former Alabama senator wanted to be securely ensconced in Trump world, he should have had the foresight to marry Ivanka. Nothing else — not endorsing early, not carrying water in trying circumstances in the campaign — will ever make him anything more than some guy who happens to be attorney general of the United States.
Trump’s treatment of Sessions is unprecedented in the annals of American government. Cabinet officials have been hung out to dry before. They have been forced to resign or been fired. Never before has a Cabinet secretary been publicly belittled in an ongoing campaign of humiliation by the president who appointed him.
The drama hangs a lantern on Trump’s flaws. Trump lacks gratitude, dismissing Sessions’ endorsement of him in the primaries as merely the then-senator’s reaction to the size of Trump’s crowds.
He obviously doesn’t feel any respect for someone who, as an honorable person with a long career in public service, deserves it. He doesn’t care about propriety, which would dictate dressing down Sessions in private, not flaying him in public. And, finally, he doesn’t feel any obligation to Sessions, despite the fact that Sessions gave up a safe Senate seat to serve in his administration.
