The attorney general’s departure — and our response to it — shows how Trump is eroding democracy. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s firing wasn’t shocking. And that, on some level, should shock us. For months now, President Trump had been humiliating his top law enforcement official, belittling him in public and yelling at him in private, in a clear attempt to force his resignation. Practically everyone in Washington had assumed Sessions would be gone after the midterms; it turns out Trump couldn’t even wait a full day after the polls closed to pull the trigger. The result of this buildup is that much of the country seems to be treating this as a foregone conclusion. The New York Times reported, for example, that “it came as little surprise when Mr. Sessions resigned the day after the midterms were over.” This is an entirely accurate assessment, but also a troubling one. The truth is that Trump firing Sessions, and temporarily replacing him with a loyalist named Matthew Whitaker who has publicly denounced the special counsel investigation, should scare us. It should inspire surprise and anger on the level of the James Comey firing in May 2017, which much of Washington treated as a serious crisis for American democracy. In both cases, the president is nakedly asserting power over the direction of an investigation, sacking people in clear efforts to block oversight of his own conduct. Read more https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/8/18073006/jeff-sessions-firing-democracy-erosion
