Remember when Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, was on thin ice with President Trump? For a couple weeks in July, the president was passive-aggressively criticizing Sessions on a near daily basis. But ever since John Kelly took over as chief of staff at the very end of July, Trump’s uttered hardly a word publicly about Sessions. Neither the White House nor the Justice Department seems interested in elaborating on how the pair, once close, are getting along now.
I asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about how often in the last three weeks Trump and Sessions had met or spoken. “We aren’t going to disclose every conversation or what is discussed in private conversations between the president and his Cabinet,” Sanders said. Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment.
Sessions did meet with Trump and the rest of the National Security Council on Aug. 18 at Camp David. The president made his final decision to raise troop levels in Afghanistan at that NSC meeting—a decision Sessions was alone among Trump’s top advisers at the meeting in opposing. The following Monday, Aug. 21, Sessions was spotted among the administration officials (including President Trump) viewing the partial solar eclipse from the White House grounds.
Flores says Sessions is at the White House “frequently” to meet with the White House counsel, Don McGahn. She did not elaborate on whether Sessions saw or met with the president during any of these regular meetings with McGahn.
Sessions Flashback: Back on July 19, Trump called the AG’s decision to recuse himself from any Justice Department Russia investigation “extremely unfair” in a New York Times interview. He told the Times he wished he had never appointed Sessions.
A few days later, on July 24, Trump called Sessions “beleaguered” in a tweet wondering why the Justice Department was not looking into the crimes of Hillary Clinton. Later that day, new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Trump and Sessions needed “to speak and determine what the future of the relationship looks like.” On July 25, Trump was asked if he would fire the AG. The president said he was “disappointed” in Sessions but only that “time would tell” on his future. The Justice Department, meanwhile, was continuing to do “business as usual.”
Things quieted down for the next several days. When Trump was asked about his relationship with Sessions on Aug. 11, he said, “It is what it is. It’s fine. He’s working hard on the border. I’m very proud of what we’ve done at the border.” And for the rest of August, Trump did not speak publicly about the attorney general he once said he wished he’d never hired. And Sessions remains the attorney general—with no sign he’s leaving anytime soon.
Mark It Down—“He’ll pledge probably a million dollars of his own personal money to help the people of both Texas and Louisiana.” – Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary, on the president’s plans to donate money to disaster relief efforts following Hurricane Harvey, August 31, 2017.
After Senate Republicans couldn’t pass an Obamacare repeal bill in July, Republican leadership on the Hill signaled they were ready to pivot to tax reform. And though he expressed a desire at the time to stay focused on health care, President Trump seems to be taking his cues and moving on.
Failing to repeal Obamacare hasn’t stopped Obamacare from failing, however. A coalition of governors, led by John Kasich of Ohio and John Hickenlooper of Colorado, are pushing a plan to stabilize the markets by enforcing the law’s unpopular individual mandate, while some in Congress are calling for further infusions of federal cash to help prop up the exchanges.
But the Trump administration is unlikely to throw its weight behind these plans, which the president has previously described as “bailouts” for insurance companies. Sarah Huckabee Sanders indicated as much on Thursday when a reporter mentioned the Kasich/Hickenlooper plan.
“I can’t imagine that would be something we would want to be involved in,” Sanders said. “But I would have to refer you to HHS specifically on that question.”
Feature of the Day—In the new issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, my colleague Matt Labash documents what he saw when the left-wing antifa movement got its hands on a trio of peaceful free-speech protesters in Berkeley last weekend. You’ll want to read the whole thing.
DACA Watch—Over the first six months of the Trump presidency, the White House has waffled about what will happen to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, instituted by President Obama to suspend deportations of illegal immigrants who entered the country as children.
But their time to make a decision is running out: A Texas-led coalition of conservative attorneys general has pledged to sue the federal government over the program if the Trump administration does not begin to dismantle it by Sep. 5.
Fox News reported Thursday that Trump had decided to axe DACA, allowing the program’s current recipients to stay in the U.S. until their two-year work permits expire but refusing to renew them.
But Sarah Huckabee Sanders disputed that report, insisting that the White House had yet to reach a decision on the program.
“This is under review, there are a lot of components that need to be looked at, and once a decision is made we will certainly let you guys know,” Sanders told reporters at Thursday’s White House briefing. “No offense to your colleague from Fox News, but I think I’m a little bit better informed than they are in terms of when the White House has made a decision. And as I just said a moment ago, it has not been finalized, and when it is we will certainly let you know.”
Weeks after he took office, Trump told ABC News that DACA recipients “shouldn’t be very worried.”
“I do have a big heart,” the president said. “We’re going to take care of everybody.”
It’s been 10 years since one of the funniest teen comedies ever hit the big screen. Superbad gets the retrospective treatment over at the Ringer, along with an oral history of how the raunchy-but-sweet movie came to be.
Pence Visits Texas—From the Associated Press: “Donning blue work gloves and dispensing hugs, Vice President Mike Pence cleared storm debris and comforted Texans grappling with the aftermath of Harvey’s destruction on Thursday, bringing a more personal touch to the hurricane zone than President Donald Trump did during his visit two days earlier.”
Song of the Day—“Too Hot To Stop” by the Bar-Kays.
