Back in February 2016, when former President Barack Obama was still in the White House and Joe Scarborough was still a Republican (technically), GOP primary candidate Donald Trump was really starting to feel the momentum build behind his campaign.
“I’m becoming mainstream, all these people are now endorsing me,” he marveled at a rally outside Huntsville, Ala., just days before Super Tuesday.
Earlier in that same event, Trump had rolled out one such endorsement.
“When I talk about immigration and when I talk about illegal immigration and all the problems with crime and everything else, I think of a great man,” the candidate teased. “Do you know who I’m talking about? Who am I talking about? Nobody knows right now, because we’ve kept it a surprise.”
It was Sen. Jeff Sessions.
The senator materialized behind Trump, taking to the microphone to issue what can only be described as a full-throated endorsement of Trump’s candidacy for the Republican nomination.
“We have an opportunity Tuesday, it may be the last opportunity we have for the people’s voice to be heard,” Sessions told the crowd. Come election day, their ballots would bear Trump’s name right alongside the names of popular orthodox conservatives, two of whom their senator worked with in the upper chamber.
But for Sessions, Trump was the only option.
He assured the crowd of cheering constituents that Trump would break from politics-as-usual to save the country from bad trade deals and illegal immigration. “A movement is afoot that cannot fade away,” Sessions declared dramatically.
He left the podium in a Make America Great Again hat, the first Republican senator to endorse the future president.
“Wow, so great. That is so great. You know, he’s an incredible guy,” Trump said after returning to the microphone.
“Let me tell you, Trump said later in the evening, “when I get Jeff Sessions, that means a lot to me. That means a lot. That means a lot.”
“That’s a biggie,” he added.
And Sessions’ admiration for Trump never faded throughout the long course of his tumultuous campaign. “People don’t have to endorse all of his rhetoric, but he’s correct on the issues, substantively, and he’s where the American people want to be, and we as a party should celebrate this and join this movement,” he told USA Today in May, defending Trump’s conservative credentials. “I was reading William F. Buckley in Wilcox County before they were born, and I don’t need a lecture from [our intellectuals] about what is conservative.”
It’s easy to forget, but that constituted a meaningful gesture at the time, when talk of a contested convention was mounting and movement leaders were hesitant to accept Trump’s candidacy. As Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, told me Tuesday, Sessions “added gravitas to Trump that he may not have had from some voters before that.”
Sessions’ early commitment to Trump was a major risk, one that many conservatives thought leaders did not take lightly. “Still hard to believe, Jeff Sessions of all people, endorsed this guy,” Rich Lowry tweeted in March 2016.
Now, more than a year later, after Sessions provided Trump with that critical boost at a key moment of the primary contest and never wavered in his support, the president is dragging his own attorney general through the mud in a remarkably public way.
Trump’s frustrations may be understandable, but his attacks on Sessions are ominous.
Conservatives who, like Sessions, stuck their necks out for Trump when it wasn’t easy, when it was sure to draw stinging rebukes of their character, are no longer able to expect any loyalty in return for their risky gestures of faith. How that will impact the remainder of Trump’s term is yet unknown, but rest assured that it will, especially as congressional Republicans are asked to cast key votes on controversial items of his legislative agenda.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
