New White House Chief of Staff John Kelly assured Attorney General Jeff Sessions over the weekend that his position in the Trump administration is safe despite the recent public humiliation campaign that President Donald Trump has launched against Sessions, according to reports from the Associated Press and Politico.
The Associated Press was first to report that Kelly gave assurances to Sessions, citing unnamed sources familiar with the conversation. Politico then confirmed that Kelly told Sessions his job was safe, citing unnamed Trump administration officials.
Kelly told Sessions that Trump is still angry with him, but said that the frustration would not lead to his firing, according to the Associated Press.
The assurances from the new chief of staff follow an intense couple weeks of Trump publicly attacking his own attorney general. Trump has blasted Sessions as “weak” and “bealeaguered,” criticizing him for not investigating Hillary Clinton. Trump even told the New York Times that he would not have appointed Sessions as attorney general if he’d known he would recuse himself from the Russia probe.
Throughout Trump’s public attacks, Sessions has reportedly not been in communication with the President. Sessions said last week that while Trump’s comments are “hurtful,” he has no plans to resign.
Trump’s public nastiness is just an act he’s putting on so we think that Trump’s guilty of treason.
So do we now have President Kelly?
It appears as if Trump only wants the appearance of President but leaves the nitty gritty of the job to others.
Does it strike anyone besides me as strange that it’s the (new) chief of staff who is passing along these assurances to Sessions? Is that sort of task in his job description?
Trump needs to fire Mueller. Ergo, Sessions’ job will never be safe.
In other news, Trump has apparently swung back to the other end of the Bannon-McMaster pendulum and is considering dispatching the ladder man to take charge in Afghanistan.
The amount of restraint needed to hold his tongue, to not undercut and contradict his new Chief of Staff, is the clearest sign so far of Trump’s desperation.
The strain will be more than he can withstand, though; this will either make him invent another crisis or he will reverse course by Monday.