If there’s one thing President Trump can’t stand, it’s disloyalty. And no one has been more disloyal, in his view, than former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the first GOP senator to endorse Trump in 2016, to campaign on his behalf, and to aggressively enforce his agenda.
In an interview with Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd asked Trump, “If you could have one do-over as president, what would it be?”
“It would be personnel,” Trump replied. “I would say if I had one do-over, it would be I would not have appointed Jeff Sessions to be attorney general. That would be my one … that was the biggest mistake.”
Sessions’ crime? Recusing himself from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between Trump and Russia. It was this decision that ultimately led to Sessions’ requested resignation. Sessions’ recusal was the ultimate breach of that which Trump values most: allegiance not to the Justice Department, not to his administration, not to the country, but to himself.
Sessions’ recusal, however, was an act of prudence: If he had not done it, Trump’s ties to the investigation would have been muddied, and the process would likely have been even more drawn-out. If Sessions had inserted himself, he would have poured fuel on the fire of Democrats all too eager to blame Trump for anything and everything.
Of course, the Trump sycophants who condemned Sessions’ recusal are the same ones who blamed Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, for the half-recusal that cast a shadow over the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
Sessions believed he had a legal and ethical obligation to remove himself from the investigation into Trump’s Russia dealings. According to the Justice Department’s guidelines, he was right. But what Trump seems to miss is that Sessions’s recusal was more than just a constitutional obligation: It was a service to his administration, insofar as it made clear that the president and his DOJ were willing to cooperate with investigators without impeding the process.
Sessions was arguably one of Trump’s most loyal appointees, but his wasn’t a blind loyalty. He had the prudence and foresight to see political consequences as they were and reduce the damage they would cause.
But, of course, the cult of personality is inseparable from the man it revolves around, and Trump leaves little room for those who choose to break away from it. This is Trump’s world, after all, and we’re just living in it.
