GOP/JEFF SESSIONS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Perhaps the most confounding example of divided loyalties in American politics right now is happening in the power corridors of Republican Alabama. From Montgomery to Mobile, the state’s GOP elite has stuck by President Donald Trump with a tenacity almost unmatched in the country. At the same time, those same die-hards have preserved their devotion for a native son the president publicly loathes, a man Trump humiliates with almost weekly jabs about his manhood, his accent, his stature and above all his loyalty. For months now, Trump has pounded on Jeff Sessions like a bass drum at the Auburn-Alabama game. Why, just on Wednesday, the president didn’t just criticize the man whose early endorsement had given his 2016 campaign much needed gravitas, he negated him. ‘I don’t have an attorney general.’ In a state where tribalism is baked into daily life—Auburn or Alabama, but never both—something almost impossible seems to be happening: Republicans are not taking sides in the bitter internecine feud between the president and his top lawman, whom he has openly fantasized about firing. Feud might be too strong a word because it suggests Sessions is punching back, which he has scrupulously avoided with the stoicism of an early Christian. But after initially backing the beloved 20-year senator, whom some call ‘Dudley Do-Right’ and uncompromisingly moral, state Republican officials have stopped defending him. Why, is the question.”
–Eric Velasco, “Alabama Loves Sessions, But Not Enough to Stand Up to Trump,” Politico, September 20, 2018