President-elect Donald Trump announced on November 18 that he plans to nominate Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as attorney general for his new administration.
Trump stated in a press release:
It is an honor to nominate U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions to serve as Attorney General of the United States. Jeff has been a highly respected member of the U.S. Senate for 20 years. He is a world-class legal mind and considered a truly great Attorney General and U.S. Attorney in the state of Alabama. Jeff is greatly admired by legal scholars and virtually everyone who knows him.
Sessions (shown) acknowledged the nomination in the same release, stating:
I am humbled to have been asked by President-elect Trump to serve as Attorney General of the United States. My previous 15 years working in the Department of Justice were extraordinarily fulfilling. I love the Department, its people and its mission. I can think of no greater honor than to lead them. With the support of my Senate colleagues, I will give all my strength to advance the Department’s highest ideals. I enthusiastically embrace President-elect Trump’s vision for “one America”’ and his commitment to equal justice under law. I look forward to fulfilling my duties with an unwavering dedication to fairness and impartiality.
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The previous service with the DOJ to which Sessions referred began when he was assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, from 1975 to 1977. Sessions was subsequently nominated by President Reagan in 1981 and confirmed by the Senate to serve as the U.S. attorney for Alabama’s Southern District, a position he held for 12 years.
Sessions was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump for the Republican nomination last February, although two governors, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Maine governor Paul LePage, had already endorsed the business magnate. During a February 28 rally in Madison, Alabama, Sessions specifically mentioned two key issues about which he and Trump were in agreement.
He told attendees at the rally that the upcoming primary “may be the last opportunity we have for the people’s voice to be heard.” He continued: “You have asked for 30 years and politicians have promised for 30 years to fix illegal immigration. Have they done it? Donald Trump will do it.”
Sessions also attacked the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), calling it “Obamatrade,” and said “a movement is afoot that must not fade away.”
Sessions has long been one of the Senate’s most vocal opponents of our nation’s loose immigration policies. In a statement to the media on June 16, he described President Obama as a “dictator” because of his policies of resettling illegal immigrants in states that do not want them, instead of apprehending them at the border and deporting them. “It’s just maddening,” he added.
In our article posted on June 17, we quoted Session’s statement to the media on the previous day: “[The states where the illegal aliens are being settled] feel like this is a dictator from Washington who will not listen to the people’s concerns and they are very concerned about it.”
Sessions continued by saying:
What’s happening in Alabama is happening around the country and it is the result of idiotic policy [that] cannot ever work, that’s encouraging more people to come illegally, and then we treat them, we house them, we feed them for months, and we release them basically on bail and then they just go where they wanted to go to begin with.
If we don’t fix the problem, we are going to continue to have it.
Sessions has repeatedly blamed the non-enforcement and amnesty policies of the Obama administration for the uncontrolled surge invasion of illegal aliens coming across our borders. In response to that surge, he posted a statement on his Senate webpage on June 3 carrying the headline: “President Obama is personally responsible for ‘rising crisis’ at border.” His message began:
The rising crisis at the border is the direct and predictable result of actions taken by President Obama. He and his Administration have announced to the world that they will not enforce America’s immigration laws, and have emphasized in particular that foreign youth will be exempted from these laws. The world has heard the President’s call, and illegal immigrants are pouring across the border in pursuit of his promised amnesty. President Obama is responsible for this calamity, and only by declaring to the world that our border is no longer open — and that the law will be restored — can this emergency be stopped.
Sessions is also the leading opponent of the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) and TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) in the Senate. As William F. Jasper noted in his article last April, “these massive ‘trade’ treaties (the TPP is 5,544 pages long), which go far beyond trade issues to create immense global governance bureaucracies, undermine national sovereignty, and give special privileges to globalist corporate interests.”
That article was about Sessions’ opposition to President Obama’s plan to push the TPP after the primary season was over, the delay being due to anti-TPP sentiment stirred up by Trump. Obama admitted this when he said, “I think we all know that elections can sometimes make things a little more challenging, and people take positions, in part, to protect themselves from attacks during the course of election season.”
In response to this tactic, noted Jasper, Sessions strongly critcized Obama for suggesting that he might try to push the TPP treaty after the primary elections. “Now, I would suggest,” said Sessions, “that the American people should be very uneasy that their president is making such a statement as that. We’ve already [heard] that there are plans by a number of forces and interest groups to try to slip this TPP treaty through after the election in a lame duck congressional session.”
“I’m firmly opposed to [the TPP] agreement,” Sessions continued. “I believe it is bad for our country, and it bothers me that if they think it’s such a good deal, why don’t they bring it forward? Why don’t we have a debate here while the elections are on?”
Trump has also repeatedly condemned the TPP, along with NAFTA and other similar trade agreements, which he has blamed for sending millions of American jobs overseas.
“The new trade deal is a disaster,” The Hill quoted Trump as saying at the South Carolina Freedom Summit in Greenville, South Carolina last spring.
During a campaign rally in Ohio in June, Trump said:
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is another disaster done and pushed by special interests who want to rape our country. Just a continuing rape of our country. That’s what it is, too. It’s a harsh word — it’s a rape of our country. This is done by wealthy people that want to take advantage of us and that want to sign another partnership.
With Sessions and Trump being on the same page on such important issues as immigration and trade, there is little wonder that the Alabamian was the first senator to endorse Trump and that he was also among Trump’s first choices for a Cabinet position.
Related articles:
Sessions Calls Obama a “Dictator” for Forcing Illegal Aliens On States
Sen. Sessions Criticizes Immigration Provisions in Omnibus Spending Bill
Sen. Sessions Blasts Obama’s Plan to Push TPP After Primaries
Sen. Sessions Wants to Defund Refugee Admissions Program
Sen. Sessions, Rep. Brat Warn Colleagues to Curb Immigration
