SHARING HIS BIGOTRY IS INSUFFICIENT...:

The President of the United States has resumed his preferred pastime: screaming into the Internet. The target of Donald Trump's ire this time was his supposedly "embattled" attorney general, Jeff Sessions. For deferring to the Justice Department's inspector general's office regarding alleged FISA abuse, Trump called his appointee's conduct "disgraceful." With the theatrical zeal of any absolutist movement, Trump's keenest supporters were quick to condemn this new Bukharin in their ranks.

The competition was over before it began. "I couldn't agree more," read the winning entry, submitted by Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. Sessions, he insisted, "must be part of the Bush/Romney/McCain Republican Establishment. He probably supported @realDonaldTrump early in [the] campaign to hide who he really is. Or he could just be a coward."  Jeff Sessions spent his career in the Senate opposing his party's orthodoxy on immigration. That career culminated in his decision to buck his party orthodoxy on Trump--legitimizing the future president's outsider campaign by becoming the first sitting senator to endorse him. Sessions is many things, but he's no coward. Falwell's denunciation is valuable only insofar as it demonstrates the malleability of the epithet "establishment" and the cultish pusillanimity around this president.

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