ABC News(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s campaign is calling on former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to stop “misleadingly” tying himself to the president amid his bid to recapture his Alabama senate seat, calling the effort “delusional.”
In a letter sent to the Sessions campaign obtained by ABC News, Trump campaign chief operating officer Michael Glassner called out the former attorney general over a campaign mailer that mentioned “President Trump by name 22 times,” demanding his campaign stop “misleadingly [promoting] your connections to and ‘support’ of President Trump.”
“The Trump campaign has learned that your U.S. Senate campaign is circulating mailers like the one I have enclosed, in which you misleadingly promote your connections to and ‘support’ of President Trump,” the Trump campaign said in the letter.
“We only assume your campaign is doing this to confuse President Trump’s loyal supporters in Alabama into believing the president supports your candidacy in the upcoming primary runoff election. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Glassner writes.
The Trump campaign points out in the letter that President Trump endorsed Tommy Tuberville over Sessions in the Alabama runoff to be the Republican nominee.
The letter was first reported by The New York Times.
However, the Sessions campaign claims the mailer the Trump campaign is taking issue with went out March 6th, days before the president endorsed Tuberville non March 10th.
In response to the letter, Sessions campaign senior adviser Gail Gitcho told ABC News in a statement: “Alabamans don’t like to be told what to do….they have shown that repeatedly. Washington told them to vote for Luther Strange over Roy Moore, they disobeyed. Washington told them to vote for Roy Moore over Doug Jones, they disobeyed. They are a hard headed and independent lot.”
The Session campaign went on to argue that the former AG is “indeed one of the strongest supporters of President Trump and his agenda” and “no one can change that.”
The letter marks another major moment in the storied history between Trump and Sessions, who was the first sitting senator to endorse the president’s 2016 campaign. Trump would go on to appoint Sessions as attorney general in November 2016. Two years later the president fired his once-close alley in 2018.
In March Trump dropped the hammer on Sessions, who’d been lavishing praise over the president during his Alabama senate bid, tweeting “This is what happens to someone who loyally gets appointed Attorney General of the United States & then doesn’t have the wisdom or courage to stare down & end the phony Russia Witch Hunt. Recuses himself on FIRST DAY in office, and the Mueller Scam begins!”
He later endorsed Tuberville on Twitter.
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