Donald Trump doth protest too much about Jeff Sessions leak
Yesterday, just two days after Donald Trump made a very public and very failed effort at humiliating Attorney General Jeff Sessions into resigning, a leak in the media just happened to confirm that Sessions conspired with the Russian government on a level not previously known. Media outlets including Palmer Report were quick to surmise that the most likely leaker was Donald Trump himself. This morning Trump unwittingly all but confirmed as much.
Here’s how Trump opted to address the Sessions situation early this morning via his infamous Twitter account: “A new INTELLIGENCE LEAK from the Amazon Washington Post,this time against A.G. Jeff Sessions.These illegal leaks, like Comey’s, must stop! (link). This is far from the first time in which he’s attacked the Washington Post, or falsely accused it of being owned by Amazon. Nor is it among the first hundred times in which Trump has tried to distract from one of his administration’s crimes by attacking the intel community. But what stands out here is that Trump is simply protesting too much, and too clinically at that.
This doesn’t even read like one of Trump’s typical, genuinely seethingly angry tweets about leaks to the media. Instead it reads like a tweet built in a laboratory, designed to sound angry about the Sessions leak, in order to cover his tracks. There’s no emotion to this tweet. Trump isn’t upset. He’s just going through the motions on this one. In an evidentiary sense, this tweet doesn’t prove that Trump leaked the intel about Sessions. But in real world terms, Trump just unwittingly confessed by trying too hard. So where does this leave us?
Jeff Sessions is many things, all of them hideous, but he’s not nearly as dumb as he pretends to be. He knows this leak about him came from Trump. Sessions proved that his first priority is to protect himself when he recused himself to take the focus off his own Russia antics. If Trump does force Sessions to resign, there’s little reason to expect Sessions won’t flip on Trump and take down the whole administration. And that’s why Trump doesn’t have the balls to outright fire him. If you find Palmer Report valuable, make a donation.
