Trump's
attacks on Jeff Sessions anger immigration hawks
| May 28, 2020
12:00 AM
President Trump
has made it clear that he doesn’t
want Jeff Sessions returned to the Alabama Senate seat he held for 20 years,
but the president’s Twitter tirades against his former attorney general could
reverberate beyond the Yellowhammer State to produce a backlash among Trump
voters concerned about immigration.
Conservative columnist
Ann Coulter, once an immigration-centric supporter of the president and author
of the book In Trump We Trust, has called Trump a
“blithering idiot,” “complete moron,” “lout,” and the “most disloyal actual
retard that has ever set foot in the Oval Office” for attacking Sessions, the
“ONE PERSON in Trump administration who did anything about immigration.” Fox News host Tucker
Carlson has told an Alabama radio
host that “Sessions was Trump long before Trump” and had been “the single most
impressive member of the Senate.” Sessions announced his comeback candidacy
last year on Carlson’s show.
Sessions was the first
senator to endorse Trump for president in early 2016, having been persuaded
that the businessman and reality TV star was the best vehicle for his populist
brand of conservatism. Trump borrowed heavily from Sessions’s immigration
policy handbook during the campaign and plucked top adviser Stephen Miller from
the 73-year-old Alabamian’s Senate staff. But as Attorney General
Sessions recused himself
in the Trump-Russia investigation, paving the way for the appointment
of special counsel Robert Mueller, he was forced out of the Justice Department
over a year later.
Trump hasn’t forgiven
Sessions. He has not only endorsed his Republican primary opponent, former
Auburn football coach Tommy
Tuberville, he has railed against Sessions on Twitter, calling him “slime”
who had his chance but blew it. “Alabama, do not trust Jeff Sessions,” Trump
posted. “He let our Country down.” Tuberville edged out Sessions in the first
round of voting thanks to Trump’s endorsement. The two will face each other in
a July runoff.
What impact Trump will
have on that race is unclear, but immigration hawks nationwide are outraged.
"I refuse to believe what’s happening to Jeff Sessions right now is
entirely due to recusal,” said RJ Hauman, government relations director at the
Federation for American Immigration Reform. “It may be a factor, but don’t
forget that those aligned with big business and the GOP establishment have
taken hold of President Trump’s policy agenda and campaign strategy. So, no
surprise that the man who has long fought for an immigration system that puts
the American people first is being thrown under the bus."
Hardliners speculate
that son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who sparred with the former
attorney general over criminal justice reform as well as immigration, played a
role in Sessions’s demise. Now, Trump’s choice, Tuberville, is not well-liked
by immigration hawks.
“Even voters attracted
to Trump because of his ostensible hawkishness on immigration, but who don't
closely follow immigration politics and policy, are likely to be influenced by
Trump's ravings,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for
Immigration Studies. “But for those who know the issue, the vendetta against
Sessions is just one more indication that Trump isn't actually a
restrictionist. I don't mean that he's lying about supporting the wall, etc. —
I think that genuinely comes from his gut — but when it comes to the level of
legal immigration and guestworker admissions, he's more in tune with Obama and
Jeb and Pelosi and Schumer than with Sessions.”
Many MAGA activists are
taking the president’s side in the argument, however. Sessions’s replacement,
Attorney General Bill Barr, has forcefully unraveled the Trump-Russia
investigation and defended the president’s
prerogatives. Aspects of the investigation, from warrants to surveil Trump
campaign associates to the case against former national security adviser
Michael Flynn, have since been revealed to be flawed. The Mueller report found
no collusion between Trump and Russia to swing the 2016 election.
The normally
mild-mannered Sessions has surprisingly hit back at Trump and defended his
recusal as required by law and resulting in the president’s exoneration.
Trump’s interventions in Alabama politics have failed before. He endorsed
interim Sen. Luther Strange in the last Republican primary for this seat, but
voters chose the controversial Roy Moore instead. Almost alone among national
GOP leaders, Trump backed Moore in the special election, but he lost to
Democrat Doug Jones.
Sessions didn’t have a
Democratic challenger last time he ran for reelection and won 97.5% of the
vote. Coulter has accused Trump of risking “another Roy Moore fiasco” in the
state, but local insiders think Trump could fall on deaf ears again.
“Twitter is an echo
chamber, and there are zero undecided voters on the platform,”
said Alabama-based Republican strategist Brent Buchanan. "It changes
nothing in the Alabama Senate runoff." Either Sessions or Tuberville
should be heavily favored over Jones later this year, with Trump at the top of
the ticket. It's a rare GOP pickup opportunity as the party defends Senate
seats in Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina and Maine.
“Trump's attacks hurt
both Sessions and himself, but the question is what's the net effect, and with
whom,” said Krikorian. “In Alabama, specifically, they probably hurt Sessions
more than Trump, though I still don't think they guarantee a win by Florida Man,” a residency-related
nickname for Tuberville.
We could be living through the
final months of the Trump presidency.
What kind of
message does it send when the president, five months before his reelection
contest, throws the first senator ever to endorse his presidency under the bus?
For supporters of Jeff Sessions, President Trump’s decision to
snub his former attorney general and endorse a goofy RINO football
coach instead is more evidence that the America First agenda
that won him the White House, and that Sessions pioneered, has become an
afterthought for his administration.
The
president rages at Sessions for his recusal from the Russia probe. But here’s a
thought experiment: what are the odds that Tommy Tuberville would have
distinguished himself as some maverick against the Russia hoax had he been in
the Senate? Any takers?
To ask the
question is to answer it. It’s because the Republican Party is so unprincipled
and unimpressive that Sessions (and Trump) stood out in the first place.
Sessions is a decent man, and his patriotic convictions carried him, with
justice, to a place of prominence in American history.
Trump, a man of instinct, interprets Sessions’ recusal as a sign
of weakness, ignoring his loyalty to the president before, during, and after his White House tenure and his vigorous
efforts to pursue the president’s America First agenda as
attorney general.
Still America First?
The
president, if it wasn’t obvious by now, is not some Leninist ideologue who was
planning to methodically deport millions of illegal immigrants. This comes as a
disappointment to some of his most ideologically driven supporters as well as
to his most delusional detractors.
Sure, the
president doesn’t have to (and probably shouldn’t) adhere rigidly to doctrine,
but Trump’s personal feud with Sessions is disappointing and counterproductive.
While not by itself dispositive, it is part of a familiar pattern of setbacks
for some of the strongest advocates of the “America First” message, who have
started to weary of his inconsistent attention to the Greatness Agenda.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has been granted a
public mandate by a clear majority of Americans to effectively shut down all immigration into
the United States. Outside the predictable partisan noises from liberal media
and activist groups, it would be a hugely popular decision. Of course, voters
have wanted to reduce
immigration for many years. They would reward Trump for it without a
doubt.
But the
president’s much-hyped immigration “moratorium” followed a familiar playbook:
after the excitement of the news died down, it was apparent that Trump left a
massive exception for hundreds of thousands of guest workers, hardly a logical
decision in the middle of the worst economic crisis in decades, and unfair to
college graduates entering a brutal job market.
The Trump
base has been inured to these reversals. While Kushner is often seen as the
culprit, the lack of focus in the president’s governance cannot be overlooked.
It came as a shock when Trump, in a recent tweet, complained that Big Tech is
controlled by the “radical Left” and that he would do something about
censorship of conservatives. Just by acknowledging the problem, the president
thrilled beleaguered members of his base who have been fighting to stay online,
with little support, over the last four years.
The president doesn’t have much to gain by liberalizing the MAGA
movement, but in the wake of Biden’s “you ain’t black” moment, the president
has sought to highlight his efforts to reform the criminal justice system,
something that his supporters never voted
for in 2016.
Why not,
instead of desperately trying to expand the coalition, focus instead on
retaining the core voters who got Trump elected in the first place?
What’s Next?
We could be
living through the final months of the Trump presidency. Victory is by no means
assured in November, and it’s anybody’s guess what will become of the MAGA
movement if Trump loses to Joe Biden. The Left will seek revenge without mercy.
Trump is a
courageous man, and his ability to survive four years of daily, relentless
counter-insurrection is admirable. The nationalist awakening that he inspired
would never have been possible without him. He is an American original, and
there is no doubt that he is the only choice for American patriots and
conservatives in November.
That is what
makes the president’s distractions so disappointing. Yes, it doesn’t help that
Trump has had to contend with a vicious media, an obstructive permanent
bureaucracy, and hoax after hoax for years on end. Neither has the weak, gelded
Republican party been of much use.
But none of
these excuses will make a difference in November, and they won’t matter years from
now when posterity looks back on the Trump era. Will this time be remembered as
an inflection point for a dying Republic, the moment America came roaring back,
or a tragic disappointment?
There is now even talk that President Trump wants to end the war in
Afghanistan before November—an aspiration of noble Trumpian
proportions—and he appears to finally have taken serious notice of
Twitter censorship (five months before the election!) It remains to be seen if
these are momentary, or lasting, attentions.
The last
four years have been great fun, but the president wasn’t elected to trigger the
libs with memes or let criminals out of prison. He was elected to serve the
American people and put America First.
The
decisions Trump makes now will resonate loudly.