Alabama Republican Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, a man who is only in the United States Senate because back in 1986 the Senate decided he was too racist to become a federal judge, has taken to the pages of USA Today to chastise the media for being unfair to Donald Trump. The major sin he identifies: covering Trump’s “Second Amendment people” comments as Trump said them, rather than as the campaign later tried to spin them. The Clinton campaign “deliberately twisted” and “totally misconstrued” Trump’s remarks, according to Sessions:
Yet, much of the news media breathlessly ran with the story, advancing the Clinton narrative designed to hurt Trump. The famed Clinton spin machine twisted the serious issue Trump was addressing — the real threat to our Second Amendment rights — and media outlets became the dissemination arm of the Clinton campaign.
Riiight. To recap, Trump said:
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know.”
We’re supposed to believe that this was a call to vote against Clinton, except for how it was clearly referring to something that could happen after she becomes president. How dare the media report what Trump said rather than what his campaign says he said! Sessions continues:
This piling on must stop. As the election heads into the fall and becomes a sprint to the finish, the media must provide the best and most fair coverage of both candidates.
It’s a classic right-wing, working-the-refs move: Be extra nice to my guy or I’ll work to delegitimize you any way I can. Sessions might need to direct his next op-ed at the Secret Service, though, because the agency tasked with protecting the presidential candidates has confirmed having “more than one conversation” with the Trump campaign about his comments.