U.S. President Donald Trump doesn’t take well to dissent. Unable to deal with the realities of life after having surrounded himself with corruption, he’s lashed out repeatedly at the Justice Department and its current head, Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He did not, though, according to Axios, bring up that criticism during a Thursday White House meeting that included the attorney general.
He often steers meetings his own direction — but he didn’t do so Thursday. He yet again proved hellbent on making angry rhetorical pronouncements — and less sure about connecting that rhetoric to actual reality.
He had gone after Sessions in an interview that aired on Fox News that very morning, telling Ainsley Earhardt:
‘You know the only reason I gave him the job? Because I felt loyalty, he was an original supporter… The Dems are very strong in the Justice Department. And I put in an attorney general that never took control of the Justice Department, Jeff Sessions. Never took control of the Justice Department.’
It’s enough of an issue on its own that Trump freely admits that he gave Sessions the attorney general job because he believed him to be loyal. His remarks support former FBI Director James Comey’s past assertion that when he still had a job, Trump asked him for loyalty. That’s not what the U.S. justice system is built to run on — but here we are anyway.
Sessions responded shortly after Trump’s Fox interview aired with a statement delivered through a spokesperson, saying:
‘I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in… The actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations… I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action.’
A source with knowledge of the Thursday Oval Office meeting in question shared that there was “no acknowledgment, not even a passing mention” of the back and forth “to the point where I don’t even know if [Trump] was aware of [Sessions’] statement.”
Again, the account reveals the president as sorrowfully detached from the actual realities of life under — and inside — his administration. He’s willing to rant on Twitter — and he does so over and over again — but he’s less willing to endeavor to back up his grand rhetorical pronouncements with any sort of reality.
In other words, in similar fashion to his repeated and utterly baseless claims that Mexico will pay for a U.S./Mexico border wall, Trump continues to rant about the supposed utter failings of the justice system without those claims corresponding to anything that’s to him even worth bringing up in an Oval Office meeting with one of the guys he’s so angry at.
By the time Friday rolled around, he’d heard of Sessions’ Thursday response to him, writing on Twitter:
‘Jeff, this is GREAT, what everyone wants, so look into all of the corruption on the “other side” including deleted Emails, Comey lies & leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA abuse, Christopher Steele & his phony and corrupt Dossier, the Clinton Foundation, illegal surveillance of Trump Campaign, Russian collusion by Dems – and so much more.’
It’s a convenient (and spastic) list of talking points, but, as CNN’s national security analyst Samantha Vinograd explained, the Twitter bullet points don’t translate to anything demanding action in reality.
Trump is “not representing the factual state of play at DOJ on a daily basis and more specifically on these particular issues,” she wrote.
In short, he’s wrong, again — and perhaps aware of that since he may or may not be willing to bring up his issues with Sessions in person.
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