Media Says Sessions, Trump Are Feuding, New Report Says Otherwise
Shortly after being sworn in as attorney general, Jeff Sessions announced that he would recuse himself from all matters involving Russia and the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion in the 2016 election, which presumably would encompass all else related to the election, perhaps even failed Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton and all of her scandalous baggage.
Sessions’ recusal seemingly has been a thorn in President Donald Trump’s side since then, prompting a slew of tweets and occasional remarks that are harshly critical of the attorney general and call into question the job he is doing as head of the Justice Department.
Sessions typically ignores those outbursts or fires back boilerplate statements that assert he is doing the best job he can with the resources available to him … usually with a subtle wink and nod signifying that things might be happening behind the scenes.
We have watched that play out over the past two days, with Trump making remarks in a Fox News interview and tweeting while Sessions fired back another statement about not being “improperly” pressured into action by political circumstances.
The liberal media, the left in general and even many folks on the right seem to ignore or miss the subtle messages from Sessions and focus solely on Trump’s harsh criticism, which the media is only too happy to play up as some sort of bitter feud between the president and attorney general.
The clear implication in all of this is that Trump and Sessions no longer like each other, Trump is an idiot who was fooled by Sessions, Trump has grown frustrated by a lack of progress with Sessions holding wrongdoers accountable, and Sessions is on the verge of being fired or forced to resign, literally any day now, as per the bulk of the media on both the left and right.
But Breitbart just pointed out how the media narrative that Trump and Sessions hate each other and are unable to work together any longer was undermined by the fact that, just hours after their latest back-and-forth, both men were together in the White House to work on something important without any sort of incident or outburst occurring.
Breitbart cited a report by Jonathan Swan of Axios, who detailed how Trump and Sessions appeared to get along just fine in an afternoon meeting about proposed justice system and prison reform measures, according to an unnamed source with “direct knowledge” of the meeting.
The meeting reportedly was attended by not just Trump and Sessions, but also Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner — who is pushing the reform measures — as well as White House counsel Kellyanne Conway and White House Director of Strategic Communications Mercedes Schlapp.
Another source said to have knowledge of the meeting told Swan that there had been “No acknowledgment, not even a passing mention” of the morning’s back-and-forth, “To the point where I don’t even know if (Trump) was aware of (Sessions’) statement.”
Swan wrote that off as simply being Trump’s purported “aversion to in-person confrontations” and noted that Trump seemed to align himself closely with Sessions’ position against proceeding with certain justice and prison reform measures for the moment, at least until after the midterm elections.
Indeed, Breitbart shared a statement released by Sessions after the meeting which said, “We’re pleased the President agreed that we shouldn’t support criminal justice reform that would reduce sentences, put drug traffickers back on our streets, and undermine our law enforcement officers who are working night and day to reduce violent crime and drug trafficking in the middle of an opioid crisis.”
But what if Sessions and Trump being able to work together without mentioning their earlier back-and-forth is not the result of either man wishing to avoid an in-person confrontation, but rather was symbolic of the fact that they’ve been capable of working together closely the entire time, despite how it may look to everyone else on the outside?
There is a theory subscribed to by some that all of the criticism and snarky comments aimed at Sessions by Trump is not really a display of his dissatisfaction with the attorney general, but rather a deliberate ploy to misdirect the liberal media and the left into thinking there is a rift between the two men.
The purpose of such would be to distract the media into not paying too much attention to what Sessions is doing behind the scenes — conducting deep investigations and preparing indictments against wrongdoers — and creating space so that when Sessions eventually announces the results of those investigations and begins to drop indictments on high-profile criminals, it will be tougher for the media to frame it all as Sessions doing Trump’s dirty political hatchet work.
Of course, such a theory requires a bit of faith in both Trump and Sessions — and sets aside the liberal media’s remarkable ability to hypocritically turn on a dime with a straight face, though it could be counting on that too, for greater effect. It also involves quite a bit of deception about their alleged rift — even aimed at some people on the right — in order to make the ruse truly believable … which it certainly appears to be, given the hysterical media coverage. Only time will tell if that theory is correct.
If so, Sessions will eventually emerge from the shadows with a slew of indictments and Trump and his supporters will cheer as wrongdoers are finally held accountable. If not, then Sessions will eventually be fired and replaced by someone else who will be tasked with doing the same thing … only this time without any cover and even more media attention focused on him or her as a potential partisan attack dog for the president.
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