Getting Rid Of Jeff Sessions Is More Important Than Getting Rid Of Donald Trump
If Trump is AIDS, then Sessions is the pneumonia that actually kills you.
Jeff Sessions (Generated by JG JPEG Library)
My anti-Trump, #NeverTrump, #NotNormal bona fides are strong. I wanted Congressional Democrats to draw up impeachment charges before he even took office. I’m also NOT one of these “but Mike Pence would be worse” people. Pence is a problem, but one that exists within normal parameters of political problems. Trump is a cancer who needs to be irradiated from our body politic, and I truly don’t give a damn how many “healthy” cells have to go down with him.
But if I could only take one scalp right now, the first one I’d take is Jeff Sessions. Not Trump, not Steve Bannon — those muppets are here to put white males “back on top.” The flaw in their plans is that white men are already on top, and they’ve been there for 400 years and counting in the New World. Trump and Bannon’s false narrative that the white man is “losing” means that they don’t really know what to do with all the power they’ve amassed. How do you win a game you’ve already won?
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Jeff Sessions is not just here for the glory of white males, he’s here for the oppression of others. He’s a man with a plan. His goal is to dismantle civil rights protections for minorities, women, and gays. Trump and Bannon looked at President Obama’s victories as an indication that white men were not properly motivated to “take back their country.” Sessions decided that all these black and brown people got uppity. He understands, correctly, that the surest path to white power in this country does not actually involve empowering whites, it’s in jailing or silencing non-whites. It is an old-school “Southern strategy.” You keep the slaves in line with fear and intimidation.
Since assuming command of the “Justice” Department, Sessions has been brutally effective. Sessions is the only person in the Trump orbit who actually knows what he’s doing. He’s the only one who actually knows how government works. He knows where the power is, and he knows how to wield it.
Sessions’s most public victory is the appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Make no mistake: Gorsuch is a patrician white man who can be trusted to reliably quash voting rights wherever he gets the opportunity for the next 30 years. Gorsuch shares none of the “populist” instincts of Trump or Bannon. Sessions got his guy on the Court. Trump and Bannon are too ignorant of how courts work to truly understand the level Sessions is operating at.
Sessions’s influence may be waning. Reports indicate that Trump was angered by Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation — even though it would seem that Sessions hasn’t really recused himself — and remains angry. There’s a report that Sessions even offered to resign.
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Nothing would be better for this country than the president firing his most effective advisor. I can’t believe I’m about to write this, but replacing Jeff Sessions with, say, Chris Christie, would be a greater upgrade than any other executive branch turnover that could possibly happen. It’s better than replacing Betsy DeVos with Omarosa or whatever. It’s better than replacing Ivanka with Tiffany.
Because even without influence, Sessions knows exactly what to do with his power at the DOJ. Look at what he’s already done:
- He’s ended consent decrees.
- He’s declared war on cities where brown people live.
- He’s restarted the drug war, even though we now know that it won’t stop drugs but will rip apart poor minority communities and families.
- He’s threatened immigration lawyers.
- He’s ended settlements where defendants pay fines to community and local non-profits.
- He’s disbanded the National Commission on Forensic SCIENCE!
- He’s simply refused to hire any new U.S. Attorneys, after convincing the president to fire them all, hobbling investigations and entire agencies.
Oh, and he’s one of the primary authors of the Muslim ban. I didn’t include that in the list above because the jury is still on whether Sessions successfully pushed through a religious test in the United States of America.
And that’s just the stuff that comes up on the first page of Google. For instance, we don’t know what the budget or power is going to be for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But if you think the EEOC will be “fully funded” and “allowed to do its work,” you simply cannot read the actions I’ve already listed.
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Jeff Sessions is who Richard Spencer would be if we stopped punching him.
The word is “triage.” Most people use triage in the medical sense — you treat the most serious, life-threatening wounds first. I’m using triage in the military sense — you save who you can and don’t waste resources on those who will likely die anyway.
If there is an opportunity, we need to triage Jeff Sessions out of power right now. Trump is the terminal disease that we cannot cure just at the moment. Sessions is gangrenous leg that needs to be sawed off before the infection spreads any further.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested he could resign amid rising tension with President Trump [ABC News]
Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.
