Trump Is Angry at Jeff Sessions for the Wrong Reasons

[EasyAce]

"I don't have an attorney general," Trump says.
By Joe Setyon
http://reason.com/blog/2018/09/19/trump-is-angry-at-jeff-sessions-for-the

President Donald Trump yesterday levied perhaps his harshest attack yet on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his one-time ally.

In an Oval Office interview with The Hill, Trump again expressed displeasure with Sessions' decision to recuse himself from the Justice Department's probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. But the president also suggested Sessions has done a bad job "at the border" and with "numerous" other things. "I don't have an attorney general. It's very sad," Trump told The Hill.

His remarks will no doubt fuel rumors that Sessions could be fired soon after the November midterm elections. Ironically, Trump is right in claiming that Sessions is a bad attorney general, through firing him because of his recusal would be the wrong move . . .

. . . From a policy standpoint, it is hard to defend Sessions' record. But it's not because he's "weak," as Trump

tweeted last July. Rather, as Reason's C.J. Ciaramella reported in August, Sessions is "taking law enforcement back to the 1980s" with his policies on the drug war, police oversight, sentencing, and civil asset forfeiture. He's also an immigration hardliner and an opponent of cannabis research.

Regarding his recusal from the Russia investigation, though, Sessions actually made the right call. As former Reason editor Ed Krayewski explained in May 2017, Sessions was involved in the Trump campaign, so overseeing a probe into alleged wrongdoing by that same campaign could have presented a conflict of interest.

Trump may eventually fire Sessions because he's not sufficiently loyal. But the attorney general is not supposed to blindly do the president's bidding when it comes to political matters . . .