he s pretty tough. i ve been on the receiving end. he s pretty tough. didn t want to fire sessions until the end of the week i would avoid trying to fire someone if i could. you re not i just find it interesting. everyone, i appreciate the discussion. very busy post-election day for sure. coming up, we ll talk with senator bernie sanders. his thoughts on whether he believes president trump can really work across the aisle after the democrats seized control of the house and whether the democrats can as well. i know you want to leave me for schwab,
the past spoke out about the investigation. nancy pelosi and schumer called for matthew whitaker to recuse himself. jay nadler said sessions firing fits a clear pattern of interference by the president. joining me now is senator chris coons. a member of the senate judiciary committee. senator, thanks for being with us. today you tweeted the president crossed a red line by firing sessions. doesn t the president, though, have the authority to fire anyone within his cabinet? anderson, he does have the authority to fire members of his own cabinet. what he can t do is fire members of his own cabinet and replace them with partisan loyalists going around the succession procedures for the department of justice. in an attempt to influence or impede or end the special counsel s investigation. so if it s done for an improper purpose, he shouldn t be doing this. cnn is reporting tonight that for whit squlnaker, ending or t to stop the russia probe, for now you say he should recuse himself.
responsibility that comes with the oath you take and if there are egregious constitutional problems, they re going to have to respond to it. it is interesting, just on a i m always interested in sort of the personal side of all this stuff. it always interests me that the president is so averse to actually firing somebody face to face it seems like. obviously with comey, but jeff sessions was there from the beginning. you would think maybe i kind of assumed, maybe just call the guy up or something and maybe he has subsequently, but it was kelly from all the reporting who actually fired him. yeah, it s like this is donald trump character on tv yeah, i saw him fire somebody every week. exactly, on television. as long as it s a fake thing, he s like, you re fired, i love it. in real life, he s like, can you please do it? let me tell you, i don t know if mark can say this, i ve been yelled at by the president. he s pretty tough. i ve been on the receiving end. he s pretty to
now. well, he didn t, quote, fire everybody right now, but he did fire sessions or had kelly fire him. as you know, the president never seemed to be able to get over the fact that sessions recused himself from the russia investigation and there are big questions about his replacement, whether he might be asked to recuse himself or whether he should recuse himself over past statements he s made. ma matt quhew whittaker was a cnn legal commentator. here s what he said back in july of 2017. i can see a scenario where jeff sessions is replaced with a recess appointment and that attorney general doesn t fire bob mueller, but he just reduces the budget so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt. to dwindle his resources. right. well, that same month, whittaker also commented on donald trump junior s meeting with a russian lawyer. who offered dirt on hillary clinton. i mean, you would always take that meeting. we have no information right now that would suggest that he
be heightened alert on the part of this new house. a lot of fear. a lot of fear. who knows. maybe this is all just, you know, coinkydink. you know, maybe, maybe, but i think when you listen to most democrats, they say, listen, sessions is perfect for trump. he s terrible on every issue, he s terrible on immigration, he s perfect for trump. there s only one thing he s not good on and that s this investigation. so what is trump scared of? that s the lens through which people are looking at whitaker. why him? what are you scared of? we could be in a situation where it all works out fine, liberals feel silly for having been concerned. feels more likely, a slow motion, almost a self-coup by which a president pulls power to himself that he s not supposed to have. wow. to protect himself.