During the campaign, Donald Trump was quick to declare someone oh so crooked, whether or not they had done anything to earn the tag. But just as Trump’s use of “fake news” is reserved for any article that fails to praise him, his idea of honesty is also centered on himself.
President Donald Trump defended Attorney General Jeff Sessions as an "honest man" who misspoke about his contacts with Russian officials during confirmation hearings, in a statement released late Thursday night by the White House.
Trump supporters can’t lie. Even when they do. Instead, Trump has another target for his attorney general’s convenient memory lapse in the midst of Senate questioning.
Trump also argued that coverage of the Sessions story has amounted to a "total witch hunt!" driven by Democrats who are trying to compensate for losses in the 2016 election. …
"The Democrats are overplaying their hand," Trump said. "They lost the election and now, they have lost their grip on reality."
Yes. Democrats haven’t been observing events in Bowling Green or Sweden, which are clearly the real issues. But “honest man” Sessions could be in some real trouble.
"It is, at best, very misleading testimony," said Richard Painter, formerly the top ethics lawyer in President George W. Bush's White House. "I don't go so far as to say that it's perjury, but there is a lesser charge of failing to provide accurate information to Congress."
Will Congress go after Sessions? Probably not. Democrats could file charges all day, but at this point Sessions could join Trump in his Fifth Avenue shooting spree and Republicans would still turn a blind eye.
Donald Trump may already have managed record unpopularity for his brief time in office, and Russian skeletons may keep tumbling from every closet, but until Republicans perceive that they’re at more risk keeping his orangeness than sending him on an extended personal tour of Gitmo, Congress will continue to interpret honesty in exactly the same way as Trump: Anything that makes Trump look bad is a lie, anything that helps is solid gold.
Truthfully, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III gives every appearance of continuing to … what’s that term? Lie.
The story he told of his meeting with the Russian ambassador has every sign of someone telling a massive, deliberate whopper. First, you have Sessions tossing off some “I don’t recall” disclaimers, but as he rolls on, by golly, he does recall some things. What things?
First he recalls that he talked about visiting Russia on a church trip, an anecdote that allows him to immediately frame the story as good church-going Christian vs. atheistic old-school Soviet. Then Sessions dismisses topics like terrorism with a single world before recalling that the Ukraine came up “somehow.” He elaborates on this point, magically without providing a single detail, until he reaches the climax where he says the conversation became a "testy" conflict between himself and the boorish, chest-thumping Russian. Finally, he mentions that Kislyak issued a lunch invitation, which Sessions turned down.
It’s a three act play. Gracious host Sessions invites in gruff, central casting Russian. They clash over (coincidentally) exactly the issue on which the Trump campaign was under fire for being too friendly to Russia. There will be no second date.
All of this is told with broad strokes utterly lacking in the touches of real conversation, or the moments of an honest memory. It’s so patently a construction, that had Sessions talked for five minutes longer, he would have introduced his wife, Morgan Fairchild.