Trump May Appoint Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions AG
By Keith Mansur
Oregon Cannabis Connection
November 15, 2016 — After Rudy Giuliani stated that he was not going to be the next Attorney General of the United States, he indicated in an interview during a Wall Street Journal event that Donald Trump may be considering him for Secretary of State and the extremely conservative Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. Though the prospect of a Rudy Giuliani AG was undeniably not good for the blossoming medical and recreational cannabis industry, if Senator Sessions were to be appointed, it would be a disaster.
In typical Donald Trump fashion, he is turning to the people that are loyal to him, and after the election, those that supported him during the acrimonious campaign. In fact, Trump was so controversial that the only sitting US Senator that endorsed Donald Trump during the campaign was Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. The Republican from Alabama has been serving in the United States Senate since 1997 and is well known for his conservative values and often extreme stands against LGBTQ rights, immigration, Obama judicial appointments, climate change, and President Obama, general.
His extreme views prevented his appointment as a federal judge in 1986 when it was reported that he opposed the NAACP and the ACLU because he believed they were “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.” The comments sunk his nomination, but he was elected to Attorney General in Alabama in 1994 and in 1996 he won election to the U.S. Senate and continues to serve as the state’s junior senator.
Earlier this year, Sessions showed just how morally opposed he is to cannabis. Speaking to a joint hearing on April 5th – a hearing that was convened to generally address the impact of a few state’s new legal recreational marijuana programs on the public – Sessions stated, “knowledge that this drug is dangerous, you cannot play with it, it is not funny, it’s not something to laugh about… and to send that message with clarity that good people don’t smoke marijuana.”
In January 2014 Sessions also expressed his dismay to Attorney General Eric Holder during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that Obama believes marijuana is safer than alcohol, and was almost distraught that he would make a statement to the New Yorker saying, “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”
Sessions response was typically conservative and he ignores the very scientific studies he apparently though Obama should have conducted himself:
“I have to tell you, I’m heartbroken to see what the president said just a few days ago. It’s stunning to me. I find it beyond comprehension….This is just difficult for me to conceive how the president of the United States could make such a statement as that….Did the president conduct any medical or scientific survey before he waltzed into The New Yorker and opined contrary to the positions of attorneys general and presidents universally prior to that?”
He later referenced Lady Gaga’s marijuana comments, stating, “Lady Gaga says she’s addicted to it and it is not harmless.” I suppose that is scientific evidence in the small mind of Senator Sessions?
Trump is a loose cannon, and he has no capability of running a government, or knowledge of what it takes. He will surround himself with others to do the governing and if those choices are people like extremist Jeff Sessions, “stop and frisk” Mayor Rudy Giuliani or “alt-white” publisher Steve Bannon, and “bomb Iran” former Ambassador John Bolton, we are in for a ugly, divisive and angry four years.
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