WhatFinger


His position is defensible, but he's telling the wrong people

Trump rips Sessions again in WSJ interview, citing recusal and weakness on leak investigations



Maybe this has always been Donald Trump's management style, but before he was president we had no reason to be all that aware of it. Maybe in his business empire, when he was unhappy with an underling, he made it known by telling anyone and everyone else who would listen until the humiliated underling got the message and got in line. I don't know. Trump figures that what worked for him in business will work for him as president, and the insistence of the political class to the contrary did not prove correct during the election campaign.
But you'd be hard pressed to find many successful CEOs who would endorse this approach, and I'm not going to be the first. I think Trump's issues with Jeff Sessions's performance as attorney general are legitimate. I also think he has no chance of correcting them with the approach he's taking, the latest example of which is to publicly rip Sessions in an interview with the Wall Street Journal:
President Donald Trump expressed his disappointment in Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday and questioned the importance of Mr. Sessions’s early endorsement of Mr. Trump’s candidacy, but the president declined to say whether he planned to fire him. “It’s not like a great loyal thing about the endorsement,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I’m very disappointed in Jeff Sessions.” Asked whether he would remove Mr. Sessions from office, Mr. Trump said he was unhappy with the attorney general’s decision to recuse himself from the probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The president has repeatedly criticized Mr. Sessions in recent interviews and on Twitter. “I’m just looking at it,” the president said when asked how long he could continue to criticize Mr. Sessions without firing him. “I’ll just see. It’s a very important thing.”

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“When they say he endorsed me, I went to Alabama,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday, recalling the endorsement. “I had 40,000 people. He was a senator from Alabama. I won the state by a lot, massive numbers. A lot of the states I won by massive numbers. But he was a senator, he looks at 40,000 people and he probably says, ’What do I have to lose?’ And he endorsed me. So it’s not like a great loyal thing about the endorsement. But I’m very disappointed in Jeff Sessions.” Mr. Trump blamed Mr. Sessions’s recusal on the Russia probe as the reason the Justice Department named Robert Mueller as special counsel in charge of the investigation. Mr. Mueller’s appointment came after Mr. Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey, who had been overseeing the investigation. I've dealt before with the matter of the Russia recusal, so I'll only summarize my point on it here. Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation mainly because the news media made a big deal out of his meeting with a Russian ambassador when he was still a senator and had no formal role in the Trump campaign. Because Sessions didn't "disclose" the meeting - as if it was a big deal for a U.S. senator to meet with a Russian diplomat, which it was not - the media deemed this nefarious. Sessions thus recused himself to avoid the perception that the investigation would be politically compromised.
This was nonsense. The meeting in question was not untoward in any way, and if people are going to recuse themselves from doing their jobs every time someone makes a big deal out of nothing, then no one can ever do their jobs. Sessions should have told the media and the Democrats to stick it. But the Republican MO in Washington is to bend over to pressure like this, and Sessions followed the usual playbook. I don't blame Trump for being unhappy with him about it.

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On the matter of the leak investigations, it's hard to fully assess Trump's complaint

On the matter of the leak investigations, it's hard to fully assess Trump's complaint because we don't know exactly how aggressive Sessions is or isn't on the question. Trump's overall concern seems to be that the Russia investigation about nothing is getting all the attention, while very real and damaging leaks that endanger national security and cripple the administration's ability to govern are treated as no big deal. Trump believes the emphasis should be flipped, and he's right. To the extent Sessions is serving the status quo on the matter, Trump's objection is completely on the mark. But Trump's approach to the matter is unprofessional in the extreme. If someone works for you and you don't like the way he's doing his job, you speak to him directly and you give him a directive to change what he's doing. Then you hold him accountable for how he responds to that directive. If he defies it, you fire him. At least you've given him a chance to satisfy the boss's wishes. The worst bosses in the world are the ones who knife people in the back by ripping them to third parties, hoping they'll get the message. Now, I will say this one small thing in defense of Trump: After the way people reacted to his one-on-one meeting with James Comey, and the request Trump reportedly made concerning Michael Flynn, maybe Trump feels he no longer has the freedom to have a meeting with an underling and give him a directive, particularly when it concerns a criminal investigation - and especially if it has to do with the Russia investigation.


The early talk that the Trump/Comey meeting might be an impeachment-worthy event was nonsense, but it probably sent a message to Trump that any such future sit-downs would result in similar political firestorms. Maybe he and his inner circle - of which Sessions is clearly not a part - now believe the only way the president can make his feelings known is through Twitter storms and media interviews. That said, this is still a terrible way to manage your team. It's hard for me to believe Trump doesn't know better given his many years of experience in business. He needs to talk directly to Sessions and tell him what he wants. If Sessions can't or won't do it, then Trump needs to fire him. The recusal problem may not be solvable, but Trump could have easily directed Sessions months ago to elevate the importance of the leak investigation. Maybe he did, and Sessions refused - or said he would do so, but has dragged his feet. If that's the case, he needs to be fired immediately. That would be the fair, professional and effective management move. What the president has done so far on the matter is clearly not.

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Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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