President Donald Trump is sniping at Attorney General Jeff Sessions seemingly every morning on Twitter, and the practice has caused the Beltway to be abuzz with speculation.

Is Trump thinking of firing his longtime supporter? Or is Trump merely trying to send Sessions a message?

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Regardless, the daily Twitter shade that Trump is throwing is unprecedented. The president of the United States is throwing digital jabs at his own attorney general.

Yet even if Trump is not planning to fire Sessions because of his recusal from the investigation into Russian hacking, the Twitter sniping — calling Sessions “beleaguered” and calling his decisions “weak” — seems disloyal to many.

Trump sought out Sessions, then an Alabama senator, early in the 2016 presidential campaign. He picked up two of Sessions’ staffers, Stephen Miller and Rick Dearborn, who had an immeasurable effect on Trump’s Republican platform on issues such as wages, terrorism, and illegal immigration.

And once Sessions did make his endorsement, he became the first senator to give Trump a nod. By doing so, Sessions, a Southerner with deep knowledge of the region’s politics, helped Trump begin tailoring a series of smashing Super Tuesday primary wins on March 1, 2016. Trump won GOP primaries that day in Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and Virginia.

But Sessions, as a senator, was often alone on the campaign trail with Trump and was a lonely figure coming to Trump’s defense after an errant tweet or an impolitic remark. He defended Trump quite a bit, and still does.

Khizr Khan
Trump took the bait as the official Republican presidential nominee after the Democrats had Khizr Khan and his wife appear at their late-July 2016 convention.

Khan, a Muslim, lost a son in the Iraq War in 2004. He questioned Trump’s commitment to religious freedom and the Constitution.

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Trump was furious and told The New York Times that it was odd that Khan’s wife was not allowed to speak. (Khan explained his wife did not want to speak.) The media, Democrats, and the Republican establishment erupted with indignation, suggesting Trump should have not dared to criticize the Khans in any manner.

Sessions immediately came to Trump’s aid, telling CNN that “his interview was not unkind. It was respectful. It did express condolences to the family for their loss.”

Access Hollywood
Trump’s biggest campaign woe upended the political world with just one month to go before the November 2016 presidential election.

On October 7, The Washington Post released a video from 2005, shot by Access Hollywood. The video featured audio where Trump could not be seen but heard, saying vulgar things about women to NBC personality Billy Bush.

The audio and video spread like wildfire. GOP elected officials and candidates bolted from their party’s nominee by the dozens, and many wrote Trump off as doomed.

But Sessions defended Trump. He told Fox News the controversy was “overblown” and “to take a deep breath.” The defense from Sessions was made all the more remarkable when it was later revealed that Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, now Trump’s chief of staff, was among a group of Republicans urging Trump to quit the race.

Immigration and Dreamer deportation
Sessions helped Trump write his immigration platform, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions helped President Trump face one of his biggest headaches on the immigration front in April, when it was disclosed federal authorities had deported Juan Manuel Montes, who says he qualified for the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Montes applied for DACA certificate in 2014, but let it expire in 2015, according to Fox News.

The issue of illegal immigration gets thorny when it involves children who were brought here by parents breaking the law.

But Sessions went on Fox News on April 19 and did not back down.

“DACA enrollees are not being targeted; I don’t know why this individual was picked up,” Sessions told Fox News. “Everybody in the country illegally is subject to being deported, so people come here and they stay here a few years, and somehow they think they are not subject to being deported — well, they are.”

(photo credit, homepage images: Gage Skidmore, Flickr; article images: Gage Skimore, Ryan J. Reilly)