Out of Sessions

Everyone who thought that Trump had gained his footing and put Democrats on the defensive with his well-received speech to Congress and who feared  a successful, focused administration from that moment on can now relax.  They're in trouble again thanks to the Attorney General, Mr. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.

At his Senate confirmation hearing to become Attorney General, Sessions was asked by Senator Al Franken (D-MN) if he ever had any contact during the 2016 presidential campaign with the Russians, given the troubling suspicion that the Russians helped to rig the general election in favor of Trump.  Sessions said he did not.  Now it turns out he spoke to the Russian ambassador not once, but twice in 2016.

Did Sessions perjure himself?  Maybe not.  He said he met with the Russian ambassador as a courtesy due to his service on the Senate Armed Services Committee and does not not remember any "political" conversations with the ambassador.  Be that as it may, he's had to recuse himself from any current and future investigations into Trump's Russian ties, as many Republicans wanted him to do, but Democrats are calling for his resignation.

Let's make something abundantly clear: Sessions isn't resigning.  Democrats routinely call for Republican appointees to resign - I remember Jesse Jackson in the 1980s calling for the resignation of Chester Crocker, President Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, that was based more on policy differences toward South Africa and Namibian independence than on any charges of malfeasance - and Republicans also routinely call for Democratic appointees to resign, provided they'll even let them take office in the first place.  So the Democratic response is pure politics.  And the Sessions affair may turn out to be nothing.  But I don't think so.  I think there's something to this, and it won't be long before Sessions finds himself in even hotter water.  But in the meantime, it's fun to watch Trump and his neanderthal White House twist in the wind again.

As for the charge from Trump that Obama taps his phones at Trump Tower . . . apart from having mentioned it, I'm not even going to dignify that with a comment.