Junior U.S. Senator from Alabama Jeff Sessions stepped up for Donald Trump during a visit with CNN’s Jake Tapper. Session serves on the Senate Arms Services Committee and acts as a national security adviser to Trump. As recently as March, Trump told supporters and the media that he didn’t need advisers on important global issues because he could rely on his “instincts” and “very good brain.” As general election season began, someone on Trump’s team talked some sense into him, but he hired a foreign policy team that was largely unfamiliar to experts in the field. Now, Trump’s also got Sessions to trot out and back him up on such issues.
Tapper wasted no time getting down to business, which concerned Trump’s morphing stance on how to deal with ISIS. The host replayed last year’s claim from Trump — who used to adopt an isolationist perspective — of knowing more than military generals and having a secret plan: “There is a method of defeating them quickly and effectively and having total victory. It is a foolproof way of winning a war with ISIS.” But on Wednesday, Trump shifted gears and claimed he’d turn the matter over to generals and give them 30 days to come up with a plan.
Session accused Tapper of “having fun” when the host pressed him to admit that Trump never had a plan in the first place: “Or did he not think that these generals whom he’s said don’t know much, are gonna come up with a better plan than he concocted?” Tapper didn’t let up and asked Sessions why it’s okay for Trump to contradict his prior statements, especially when he sounded so confident about that foolproof plan. Sessions insisted that this is not a “fundamental contradiction at all,” and he feels that Trump is capable of giving the military proper leadership and helping troops accomplish what they couldn’t do without a “decisive leader.”
After running around in a few more circles, Sessons was apparently tired of bending over backwards while trying to pretend that Trump’s position on defeating ISIS hadn’t truly shifted. So, he finally stated, “The important thing, really, is what are we going to do in the future? What did Donald Trump say today?” Sessions seems pretty cool with supporting a Republican nominee who changes his mind at will on matters of national security.
