Kenneth Starr has Advice for Trump
Really, it is more of a plea (as published in WaPo):
Mr. President, please cut it out. Tweet to your heart’s content, but stop the wildly inappropriate attacks on the attorney general.
[…]
The attorney general is not — and cannot be — the president’s “hockey goalie,” as new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci described Sessions’s job. In fact, the president isn’t even his client. To the contrary, the attorney general’s client is ultimately “We the People,” and his fidelity has to be not to the president but to the Constitution and other laws of the United States. Indeed, the attorney general’s job, at times, is to tell the president “no” because of the supervening demands of the law. When it comes to dealing with the nation’s top legal officer, you will do well to check your Twitter weapons at the Oval Office door.
[…]
Mr. President, for the sake of the country, and for your own legacy, please listen to the growing chorus of voices who want you to succeed — by being faithful to the oath of office you took on Jan. 20 and by upholding the traditions of a nation of laws, not of men.
I would not recommend anyone hold their breath.
I do think that of all the mistakes, blunders, and bizarre tweets the President has issued, his attacks on Sessions may be the one that gets the most traction because it is inside the GOP and Republican Senators in particular are not going to take kindly to it. Plus, Sessions was a mainline politician who threw in with Trump early, helping him build credibility with certain segments of the party. For Trump to come at him on loyalty of all things will be galling to some in the GOP.
If one is wondering why the former President of Baylor University’s views are salient on this topic, go here.
Trumpsky’s defenders express concern Mueller may exceed his mandate and go on a fishing expedition. Ken Starr is the poster boy for exceeding a prosecutorial mandate and Monica Lewinsky was his trophy fish.
Kenneth Starr seemed to be okay with the mistreatment of women at Baylor. I can understand why he’s generally a big fan of Trump.
While going after Sessions may be galling, I’m still willing to hold with Sessions going under the bus before Trump. Trump is now the soul of the GOP, sad as that is. He is the perfect embodiment of who they see themselves to be.
Good to hear from Ken again.
Starr preferred that the AG be left alone in order that he was free to conduct a 6 year investigation into the Whitewater Land dealings of the Clintons … one that morphed into investigations into everything about the Clintons.
This is just too … too … fabulous.