Attorney General Jeff Sessions Resigns; the Internet Reacts
Embattled Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, the tempest in a teacup of the Trump White House, resigned on Wednesday, a move announced in a tweet from his boss. In his resignation letter, Sessions said that he was submitting his resignation “at your request,” which is essentially another way of saying he was terminated. Trump appointed Sessions’s chief of staff at the Department of Justice, Matthew G. Whitaker, as acting attorney general.
Anyone who has paid attention to the long history of tension and humiliation between Sessions and Trump was not surprised. Though Sessions effectively used his AG position to further some highly criticized changes at the Justice Department (like instituting a zero-tolerance policy at the United States border and threatening to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities) he did not always get along with the man in charge. Trump, who reportedly referred to Sessions as “Mr. Magoo,” did not like the fact that Sessions recused himself from Robert Mueller’s Russia probe after consulting with DOJ ethics officials. In an interview with The New York Times, Trump all but admitted that he had assumed his nominee would have protected him during the investigation: “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else,” he said. Sessions told Tucker Carlson that the criticisms were “kind of hurtful,” but that he continued to support the president as he served in his post.
It doesn’t seem like the ice between the two had enough time to thaw, however, especially after Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen and 2016 campaign chairman (and ostrich jacket enthusiast) Paul Manafort both pleaded guilty. Now that Jeff Sessions has finally become the latest in a long, long line of Trump appointees to leave their posts, here are the Internet’s best reactions:
