Jeff Sessions is really all in on calling one of the 50 United States an “island in the Pacific” as a way to attack the legitimacy of a duly appointed and confirmed federal judge who sits in Hawaii. In an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, Sessions did not back down from defending that indefensible position.
VELSHI: Attorney General, what do you have to say about that?
SESSIONS: Well, I think that was a perfectly correct statement. We have some 700 federal judges. One of them has now stopped the President of the United States, who is briefed daily from the Department of Defense, the CIA, the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, on the dangers and threats we face.
That’s how the justice system works, and you know it, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. You weren’t objecting too loudly when one judge sitting in Texas blocked then-President Obama’s order expanding overtime eligibility. Or when one judge sitting in Texas blocked Obama’s order requiring companies that wanted big federal contracts to disclose labor law violations. Or when one judge sitting in Texas blocked Obama’s rule allowing transgender students to use the bathroom in school. Shall. I. Go. On? Oh, but Sessions went on:
SESSIONS: I wasn't diminishing the judge or the island of Hawaii, that beautiful place. Give me a break. I was just making the point that’s very real, one judge, out of 700, has stopped the President of the United States from doing what he believes is necessary to protect our safety and security.
I believe it is constitutionally sound. I believe he has explicit statutory authority to do this act. We expect to prevail on appeal.
Okay, for real, Hawaii is not “an island,” it is a state composed of eight major islands. A state with the same rights and the same status in the judicial system as f’ing Texas. Or Sessions’ home state of Alabama. And Sessions can certainly appeal that judge’s decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and then to the Supreme Court. That is how the U.S. justice system works and as someone who once hoped to become a federal judge—before the Senate concluded that his racism disqualified him from the position—Sessions damn well knows that, yet he continues to try to delegitimize that system in the name of bigotry and fear.