From Washington Compost:
“Sessions wouldn’t have even known there was reason to recuse himself when he was nominated, given his recusal had to do with his failure to report contacts with Russia’s ambassador during the ensuing confirmation process.”
Trump’s using an old leadership trick — put the monkey on the other guy’s back.
If Sessions had to recuse, that’s HIS problem, not Trump’s. If Sessions can’t do his job, that’s the bottom line.
A man like Trump counts his words carefully........nothing he says is off-the-cuff, unplanned or misspoken.
At that level of govt, nothing is by chance-—there’s a huge built-in megaphone that resonates across continents.
The spoken word is powerful........usually used to advance an agenda.
Trump criticized Sessions thusly: "Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers... He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren't."
I assume that is a reference to not disclosing that he met with the Russian ambassador. The exchange below is the root and the only root the press spins up as "the reason Sessions had to recuse."
FRANKEN: OK. CNN has just published a story and I'm telling you this about a news story that's just been published. I'm not expecting you to know whether or not it's true or not. But CNN just published a story alleging that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect last week that included information that quote, "Russian operatives claimed to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump." These documents also allegedly say quote, "There was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump's surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government."Jeff Sessions Confirmation Hearing - January 10, 2017Now, again, I'm telling you this as it's coming out, so you know. But if it's true, it's obviously extremely serious and if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?
SESSIONS: Senator Franken, I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't have -- did not have communications with the Russians, and I'm unable to comment on it.
Sessions addressed the subject of this answer, at length, directly, in prepared remarks, delivered at the opening of his June testimony before Senate Intelligence.
Link to transcript of June 13, 2017 testimony, in case anybody wants to read those remarks.
-- Trump's using an old leadership trick -- put the monkey on the other guy's back.
If Sessions had to recuse, that's HIS problem, not Trump's. If Sessions can't do his job, that's the bottom line. --
If we lived in a parallel universe where Sessions had not recused, and failure to do so (which would be a violation of DoJ conflict management regulations) didn't create a storm of its own right - what constitutes Sessions "doing his job" with the issue?